


Clover and Violets 2020

by merryfortune



Series: YGO Femslash Febs [2]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Angst, F/F, Femslash February 2020, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 29,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22501000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryfortune/pseuds/merryfortune
Summary: Femslash February entries. Chapter 1 functions as a table of contents.
Relationships: Akaba Himika/Sakaki Yoko, Angela/Carly Nagisa, Aqua/Pandor (Yu-Gi-Oh!), Aqua/Sugisaki Miyu, Aqua/Sugisaki Miyu/Zaizen Aoi, Aqua/Zaizen Aoi, Bessho Ema/Hayami, Bessho Ema/Taki Kyoko, Cathy/Mizuki Kotori, Cyber Tutu/Tenjouin Asuka | Alexis Rhodes, Gloria Tyler/Tenjouin Asuka | Alexis Rhodes, Hanazoe Aika/Kamishiro Rio, Hiiragi Yuzu/Houchun Mieru, Hiiragi Yuzu/Kurosaki Ruri/Rin/Serena, Hiiragi Yuzu/Rin, Hiiragi Yuzu/Serena, Houchun Mieru/Koutsu Masumi, Houchun Mieru/Naname Mikiyo, Houchun Mieru/Serena, Izayoi Aki/Sherry LeBlanc, Kamishirakawa Kiku/Sugisaki Miyu, Kamishirakawa Kiku/Zaizen Aoi, Kawai Shizuka | Serenity Wheeler/Mazaki Anzu | Tea Gardner, Kozuki Anna/Mizuki Kotori, Mazaki Anzu | Tea Gardner/Nosaka Miho, Pandor/Taki Kyoko, Saotome Rei | Blair Flannigan/Tenjouin Asuka | Alexis Rhodes, Sugisaki Miyu/Zaizen Aoi, Tenjouin Asuka | Alexis Rhodes/Grace Tyler
Series: YGO Femslash Febs [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617841
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16





	1. Table of Contents

**Day 1 /** Crystal

  * **Ship:** Raindropshipping | Aqua/Miyu
  * **Universe:** Vrains
  * **Rating:** G
  * **Tags:** Angst, Canon Compliant



**Day 2 /** Talisman

  * **Ship:** Lithomancyshipping | Masumi/Mieru
  * **Universe:** Arc V
  * **Rating:** G
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Fluff, Humour



**Day 3 /** Glow

  * **Ship:** not applicable | Anna/Kotori
  * **Universe:** ZeXal
  * **Rating:** T
  * **Tags:** Angst, Unrequited Pining, References to Bullying, Canon Typical Depictions of Violence



**Day 4 /** Paradise

  * **Ship:** not applicable | Asuka/Gloria
  * **Universe:** Arc V
  * **Rating:** T
  * **Tags:** Pre-Canon, Canon Compliant, Angst, Prose



**Day 5 /** Ritual

  * **Ship:** not applicable | Aoi/Aqua/Miyu
  * **Universe:** Vrains
  * **Rating:** T
  * **Tags:** Canon Divergent, Fluff



**Day 6 /** Fragrant

  * **Ship:** FrozenFlowersshipping | Aika/Rio
  * **Universe:** ZeXal
  * **Rating:** T
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Post Canon, Slight Angst, Surreal Elements



**Day 7 /** Gorgeous

  * **Ship:** not applicable | Kyoko/Pandor
  * **Universe:** Vrains
  * **Rating:** T
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Post Canon, Prose, Sexual References, Sci-Fi Body Horror



**Day 8 /** Sensation

  * **Ship:** not applicable | Angela/Carly
  * **Universe:** 5D’s
  * **Rating:** T
  * **Tags:** Pre-Canon, Unrequited Crushes, Cussing, Arc V References



**Day 9 /** Genuine

  * **Ship:** not applicable | Kiku/Miyu
  * **Universe:** Vrains
  * **Rating:** G
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Canon Typical References to PTSD, Unrequited Pining, Long Distance Relationship, One-Sided Relationship



**Day 10 /** Honey

  * **Ship:** Serenadeshipping | Serena/Yuzu
  * **Universe:** Arc V
  * **Rating:** G
  * **Tags:** Canon Divergent, Post Canon, Fluff



**Day 11 /** Adoration

  * **Ship:** not applicable | Asuka/Cyber Tutu
  * **Universe:** GX
  * **Rating:** G
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Seemingly Unrequited Pining



**Day 12 /** Sentimental

  * **Ship:** Mamashipping | Himika/Yoko
  * **Universe:** Arc V
  * **Rating:** T
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Post Canon, Adultery, Heavy Petting



**Day 13 /** Crown

  * **Ship:** Sideshipping | Anzu/Shizuka
  * **Universe:** Dark Side of Dimensions
  * **Rating:** T
  * **Tags:** Post-Canon, Fluff & Angst, Terminal Illness



**Day 14 /** Innate

  * **Ship:** Teardropshipping | Aoi/Aqua
  * **Universe:** Vrains
  * **Rating:** G
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Introspective Fic, Light Angst



**Day 15 /** Dandelion

  * **Ship:** Chantshipping | Mieru/Yuzu
  * **Universe:** Arc V
  * **Rating:** G
  * **Tags:** Post Canon, Canon Compliant, Angst, Minor or Implied Relationships



**Day 16 /** Rain

  * **Ship:** Scytheshipping | Ema/Kyoko
  * **Fandom:** Vrains
  * **Rating:** M
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Post Canon, Angst, PTSD, Sexual References, Hurt/Comfort, Victim Blaming (?)



**Day 17 /** Inspire

  * **Ship:** Coinshipping | Anzu/Miho
  * **Universe:** Duel Monsters
  * **Rating:** G
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Fluff



**Day 18 /** Present

  * **Ship:** Fairytaleshipping | Mieru/Mikiyo
  * **Universe:** Arc V
  * **Rating:** G
  * **Tags:** Post Canon, Canon Compliant, Childhood Friends, Angst, Coming of Age



**Day 19 /** Dread

  * **Ship:** Zinniashipping | Aoi/Miyu
  * **Universe:** Vrains
  * **Rating:** T
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Missing Scene Fic, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Canon Typical Depiction of PTSD



**Day 20 /** Noise

  * **Ship:** Tuneshipping | Rin/Yuzu
  * **Universe:** Arc V
  * **Rating:** G
  * **Tags:** Slight Canon Divergence, Post Canon, Fluff, Introspective Fic



**Day 21 /** Eyes

  * **Ship:** Evashipping | Asuka/Rei
  * **Universe:** GX
  * **Rating:** T
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Fluff, Coming of Age



**Day 22 /** Beast

  * **Ship:** Lunomancyshipping | Mieru/Serena
  * **Universe:** Arc V
  * **Rating:** G
  * **Tags:** Canon Divergent, Fluff



**Day 23 /** Fruit

  * **Ship:** Perennialshipping | Aoi/Kiku
  * **Universe:** Vrains
  * **Rating:** G
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Fluff, Domestic



**Day 24 /** Lock

  * **Ship:** Cattrapshipping | Cathy/Kotori
  * **Universe:** ZeXal
  * **Rating:** T
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, Implied Kinks, Implied Sexual Content



**Day 25 /** Clouds

  * **Ship:** Elfinshipping | Ema/Hayami
  * **Universe:** Vrains
  * **Rating:** T
  * **Tags:** Vaguely Canon Divergent, Minor/Implied Ships, Unrequited Akira/Hayami, Unrequited Akira/Ema



**Day 26 /** Poetry

  * **Ship:** Keepshipping | Asuka/Grace
  * **Universe:** Arc V
  * **Rating:** T
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Post Canon, Fluff & Angst, First Kiss, Prose



**Day 27 /** Compass

  * **Ship:** RoseKnightshipping | Aki/Sherry
  * **Universe:** 5D’s
  * **Rating:** G
  * **Tags:** Canon Compliant, Fluff



**Day 28 /** Protect

  * **Ship:** not applicable | Aqua/Pandor
  * **Universe:** Vrains
  * **Rating:** T
  * **Tags:** Post Canon, Introspective Fic, Pining, Mentioned Controlling Behaviour



**Day 29 /** Mirror

  * **Ship:** Natureshipping | Rin/Ruri/Serena/Yuzu
  * **Universe:** Arc V
  * **Rating:** G
  * **Tags:** Post Canon, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Established Relationship




	2. Crystal

There was no reprieve that Aqua could consistently give unto Miyu whilst she laid in her bed, dreadfully comatose and terrorised by dreams of her past.

At Miyu’s bedside, Aqua weighed her options. If she stayed, she would tire and thereby serve no purpose in her exhaustion and Miyu would continue suffer. If she stayed, she may be discovered and that could lead into a further, unkind fate and it was possible that Aqua would suffer too. But, if she left, and, unfortunately, she did intend to leave, she would betray these feelings in her heart, in her soul and both would suffer regardless.

It was always like this. Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t.

It was always like this. Miyu was so precious to her but it was her suffering that Aqua knew better. Not her love, not her joy, not her smiles but her agony, instead.

Aqua had always been too hesitant. She dearly loved this human girl because that was her design. The very core of her soul. She was an Ignis. She had been designed to be the successor of humanity and the originator she had been gifted, stolen from the world, had been very kind. Very bright eyed and optimistic and very much in love with the world. All wonderful things to have in such a tiny, white room where she duelled.

But, instead, Aqua felt more akin to being just a doll. One which Miyu dreamt of in some vain attempt of normalcy in her suffering. This doll would have princess hair and a kind personality, a doll to clutch around the waist and wave in the air and a vessel for play alongside her best friend, Aoi because that’s what little girls did. They played with their dolls.

And that’s what dolls did. They were played with. They did not play. They did nothing for their little girls, no matter how dear and precious.

Ten years ago, Aqua was making the same excuses. She couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t touch that girl. She couldn’t save her. She couldn’t even offer some brief reprieve as Miyu nearly died so that Aqua could nearly live.

And even now, ten seconds ago, Aqua was still making the same excuses and yet they had twisted to be all the more bittersweet. She could do something, but it would be futile. She could touch that girl, but it did little to offer her that sweet reprieve Aqua so wished she could bathe her precious Miyu in. Miyu, who still writhed in her bed, suffering with every second Aqua spent away from her because that’s all she ever was with Miyu. Away.

But even then, if she did touch that girl, if she did do something for that girl, if she could offer that brief reprieve, there would only be nightmares inside of it.

As much as Aqua wanted to be a doll, for it seemed to be so easy to be of plastic and polymer, she wasn’t. She was an Ignis. She had options. She could pick either her own kin, the Ignis, or she could pick her own kin, the humans. She chose the latter and in doing so, she chose to fight.

So, with this nebulous connection to this girl she had, she created a symbol of it. Marincess Crystal Heart. A symbol of her love and a symbol of her future to become a symbol of her desire to protect Miyu. It was difficult and tentative but Aqua willed such a card into existence as she drowned with all these feelings.

Aqua didn’t truly know Miyu. Miyu didn’t truly know Aqua. And Aqua was worried there was cruelty in what she did; she was worried that she was replacing Miyu by teaming up with Aoi, but she had to do something.

Gathering them up, those scant memories she had, the origin of her own self, looking deep within her own soul and finding all the virtues and vices, Aqua took all these horrible feelings and she forged them into beautiful crystal guarded by a being of mist. And hopefully, in this card, and in these feelings and in these petrified actions, Aqua would one day be able to gift them all, wholeheartedly, to her precious girl whom she loved so tightly and who inspired it all, for better or worse.


	3. Talisman

Masumi stared at all the elements of Mieru which made her so gaudy. She was so small and garish, and it drove Masumi insane to see this tiny little fortune teller trot about as though she were better than everyone else.

The boys, of course, would see an irony in Masumi’s frustrations but they would never voice it. No, they cared for their lives too much to do something like that to Masumi but her crystal-clear hypocrisy, clear to everyone but herself, was quite the sight.

She had those teeny tiny little shoes with those dumb frilly socks and more ribbons on that dress of hers than anyone needed. She just traipsed about with that crystal apple of hers in hand and not to mention that pretentious little gold-plated disc around her neck. And that attitude of hers as well! Life just seemed to come far too easy to little Houchun Mieru. Most people had to study for good grades but this brat of a girl had fate and destiny on her side and Masumi didn’t believe in anything that she couldn’t see so it was totally unfair that Mieru just had this nigh hedonistic view about herself and the world. Even when challenged, be it in a Duel or in learning that life was infallible and multiple dimensions and living monsters were all things, she took it all in stride because her horoscope said that Pisces was in the perfect place in the sky for her placements.

It was all nonsense!

To Masumi, at least.

The boys, when listened to Masumi go on and on about all her thousands of qualms, all hiding her affections for little Houchun Mieru, were willing to suspend a bit more belief. Hokuto loved his constellations, after all, and Yaiba had an animal intuition and as aforementioned, multiple dimensions and living monsters were all real things so why couldn’t Mieru’s psychic aptitude be real as well?

But, again, they valued their lives too much to mention something to Masumi was still one hundred percent convinced that she was straight and that she was in love with their teacher, Professor Marco.

Regardless, Masumi would love, no adore, nothing more than to knock Mieru down a couple of pegs and with eyes like hers, Masumi had just the idea on how to do it. After all, that annoying little brat, with her big cute green eyes and giggly voice and sweet-smelling pinkie ginger hair, just loved to parade around her occult for the aesthetic artefacts and Masumi was very interested in those items’ pedigrees.

So, she sought the girl out. Something which wasn’t too difficult given that the girl had latched onto the You Show kids and enjoyed hanging out there, whenever she could which actually wasn’t all that frequent given that Mieru, despite her loss to Yuya, remained the top of her own school’s leader boards. Something that Masumi could give her a teensy bit of praise for...

Outsiders weren’t actually allowed to sit in during classes which gave Masumi the perfect opportunity to snipe Mieru and finally take her down a few pegs like she so desired.

She observed, to begin with, as Mieru was content to keep to herself. As per usual, she was examining her crystal apple over and over again. Masumi was a jeweller but even she couldn’t find that much entertainment in examining the same faucets over and over again and yet Mieru did. All whilst humming blithely to herself and kicking her feet as the table and chairs were far too big for her. As Mieru did that, Masumi kept sneaking glances at her. At her tiny, pudgy hands and at her cattish, little smile. She was objectively adorable, and Masumi was not weak to admit that.

The long Masumi waited to make conversation with Mieru about the things she likes- er, observe her, the more awkward it became. Words jumbled at the back of Masumi’s throat. She attempted to rehearse how she wanted to oh so casually broach the subject, but it all went wrong. Even in her head. Every so often, Masumi would divert her gaze lest Mieru realise that she was staring, watching, observing. She’d drum her fingers on the desk and play with her hair, trying to keep a futile air of nonchalance. Tension was thick in the air and the fluorescent lights overhead were torturous and Masumi still had no idea what was happening in that “classroom”, but it couldn’t be as good as what would happen in an LDS clubroom after school hours.

All of this was how it felt to Masumi, at least. Mieru was oblivious, ignorant, happily content to be lost in how her precious crystal apple gleamed and glittered and glimmered.

Masumi found it somewhere between boredom inducing and completely infuriating.

That word jumble continued to clog up her throat and mouth and even her nose, but she found some courage, pushing her hair off her shoulders, Masumi asked: “Pardon me, Mieru, but I’m curious.”

“You are?” Mieru exclaimed, eyes bright, as she turned to Masumi. “About the future? My abilities? Well, I’ve got tarot cards; Duel Monsters cards; pendulums; dream interpretation; numerology; runes; horoscopes; oooh, do you want your birth chart done? Something else entirely?”

Masumi was stunned by the way Mieru reeled off all those forms of divination. Her head spun. She didn’t even know what half of Mieru had rattled off was. She blinked. And then coughed and found her reply.

“Something else.” Masumi, almost dumbly, said.

“Interesting. Well, what do you want? Feathers? Clouds? Precious Gems-?”

“No.” Masumi piped up; interrupting Mieru. “I just want to look at your... things. No offence, but I don’t really believe in that sort of thing. Only hard work.” She crossed her arms and bore a particularly snooty look on her face.

Mieru giggled smugly. “It is hard work. All the things I had to learn but as they say, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. So, what did you want to take a look at?”

“Your crystal apple. I just want to know what kind of crystal it is.” Masumi said.

“I’ve never had my apple appraised before...” Mieru mumbled, looking over the object in question, turning it around and letting glint off it. “But that could be fun so sure. Just be careful. I don’t let just anyone touch my precious crystal apple.”

Masumi’s heart skipped a beat. Why did that sound so casually... intimate?

Mieru carefully handed over her precious crystal apple to Masumi. Their fingers skirted one another, touching wispily, and then Masumi secured her clutch on the crystal apple.

It was tenderly warm. Warmed by Mieru’s hands and her admiration for it. Thus, Masumi began to make her own inspections of the crystal apple. All whilst Mieru waited with such brilliant eyes, waiting for praise and validation, no doubt. Such pride sparkles upon her face and Masumi felt bad. Within seconds, she had her conclusion and it was not good.

The way it felt on her fingertips. The weight it held in her hands. Masumi was certain. She let out a pertinent sigh and returned the crystal apple to Mieru.

“Well?” she prompted Masumi, excited.

“Well, what? It’s worthless. It’s glass. Not even crystal or even zirconia.”

“What?!” Mieru exclaimed, heart breaking.

“I don’t know where you got it, but I sure hope you weren’t duped in the process.” Masumi shrugged.

Guilt twinged in her heartstrings as she averted her gaze from Mieru. She played with her hair to distract her from this peculiar pain in her chest. She felt really, really bad about hurting Mieru’s feelings as she did. It so was not the gratifying experience Masumi thought deflating such a brat’s ego would be.

Her glassy eyes were swelling with tears as her lower lip protruded, pouting, as she held back a sob. Her hands shook with betrayal or maybe even loathing of Masumi’s tactless appraisal.

“Mama and Papa bought it special for me.” she murmured.

And Masumi’s eyes lit up with an idea upon hearing that. “It is.” she said. “It still is. It may be glass but it’s still precious to you because it means a lot to you. That has a price and a quality that even the most well-trained eye could never value because it’s sentimental. So please, Mieru, don’t be upset.”

“I-I guess you’re right.” Mieru mumbled, pawing at her eyes uselessly as her tears had long since dribbled down the sides of her chubby cheeks.

“I’m glad to hear that.” Masumi said, smiling.

Mieru turned to her slightly, head tilted. “Ne, Masumi, if my crystal apple ever fails me or is broken, what should you, the ever so wise jeweller, suggest as a replacement?”

Masumi paused. She let those cattish eyes study her and she let that aura of Mieru’s wash her over. Soon, Masumi found the suggestion she would make. Right there in Mieru’s gorgeous eyes. Her gorgeous eyes which were not emeralds and were not jade nor tourmaline. She let out a self-important puff of laughter before replying.

“I haven’t studied such pseudoscience, I don’t know what it means but,” she ambled, “but peridot, perhaps.”

“The stone of transformation.” Mieru beamed to herself whilst Masumi blushed.


	4. Glow

Kotori had a small soft spot for Anna.

The girl was terrifying. Anyone could see that. She always had been and, more likely than not, always would be but Kotori couldn’t help but admire her. Maybe not because she was terrifying by itself but because of what her terror meant, to herself, at least. Anna had this glow of righteousness about her. It was orange and flaming and it burned so brightly with the purity of good intentions. It was entrancing and impossible to get close to without being scorched.

Kotori would describe this glow of righteousness which allured her to Anna as misplaced. This was because Anna’s good intentions were frequently fraught with unjustifiably violent ends, but it was so, so bright. She wanted to protect others. She wanted those who she deemed as evil to despise her and those she deemed as weak to look up to her. Anna’s justice was a strange justice, almost imbecilic but it worked. It was undeniable that Anna the tough girl was someone who ought to be both feared and loved.

Kotori mused, jokingly, to herself that that’s probably exactly what Anna would want. She would want people afraid of how much they love her. And Kotori was a little bit afraid of how much she loved Anna because she was afraid it went beyond friendship and that the measure wasn’t reciprocated but keeping afar was probably safer. For both her heart and her body as Anna tended to leave explosions in her wake so Kotori was very much content to watch from afar.

To pine.

To pine after that silhouette of Anna. Kotori rarely thought of her face – though, her face was very good, especially when she maniacally and ecstatically beamed, thick in the violent throes of her energetic and bombastic duel. Instead, Kotori near fixated on Anna’s silhouette. Her back. The strength, that beautiful and beastly glow, that poured off her, in the midst of explosions and smoke and cannon fire.

Being behind it, such a small back with sharp shoulders, Kotori was certain would feel safe. Protected. After all, those were things that Kotori struggled to feel because being friends with Yuma and being a member of the Numbers Club was hectic and she didn’t exactly have any means to defend herself. She didn’t duel, she didn’t haul gigantic canons around, she didn’t ride a motorcycle. So, Kotori reasons with herself, its better to be a distressed damsel in love than merely the damsel in distress and she could think of no better hero than Anna to yearn for.

Anna who had always been there for the weak and downtrodden. Even if she was an overwhelming onslaught of wrongly weighted justice, she was always there for those whom she wanted to save, and Kotori wanted to be among them.

As kids, and Anna didn’t even know this, but Kotori likes to think that she would appreciate it if she knew, Kotori had always been the one to fix Anna’s messes. She would patch up victims of all stripes: those who were victims of bullying and those who were victims of Anna’s justice. Kotori would always smooth it over so that Anna could avoid reparation.

Who knows?

Maybe she did notice. Maybe she did appreciate Kotori for that. Maybe she saw the glow that Kotori produced, no matter how soft and feeble, and that she liked it. That she liked it the same that Kotori liked Anna’s ferocious glow.

But that was silly thinking. Everybody knew that Anna wore her feelings on a sleeve and her affections laid elsewhere but Kotori could make her heart flutter with such futile musings.


	5. Paradise

The definition of “paradise” kept changing for Asuka and she very much detested that very much.

According to the Cambridge English dictionary, paradise was defined as what follows: a place or condition of great happiness where everything is exactly as you would like it to be.

The most common example of “paradise” was the idea of the tropical. A holiday getaway of sugar white sands, palm trees, of fruity, coconut drinks on the beach. It was certainly her brother’s idea of paradise and Asuka had to admit, from the very first moment in which she set foot on Duel Academia, she was inclined to agree. From the free, sprawling breezes carrying the vivacious scent of the breeze to the technical aspects of the school, Asuka did, indeed, think this place a paradise and she had more than earned her place both in it and within its most prestigious ranks.

But as much as beaches and libraries were paradise to Asuka, she had also heard that other people could be paradise as much as they could be perdition. Loved ones, specifically, could be paradise. The good place. And Asuka had her friends, she had her brother, and there was someone special to her as well.

Gloria Tyler.

She was resplendent, in silver and violet, with an ethereal presence about her. She was striking. Animalistic and yet elegant. Asuka was helplessly attracted to her, allured by her, from the moment their eyes met across the tiles of the ballroom in which the Professor held his soiree for students who had earned his favour.

Asuka felt privileged to have the Professor’s acknowledgement and yet, it paled in comparison, became as feeble as dust mites drifting in a sunbeam, in comparison to holding Gloria’s gaze as she sauntered closer. And when she smiled, Asuka’s heart stopped and she became enthralled in the aura of Gloria Tyler.

The pleasure was all Asuka’s when Gloria introduced herself, but, of course, her reputation preceded her but Asuka hung on tightly to ever word which dropped from Gloria’s mouth like a rivulet of molten gold. She was everything she was promised to be and more. She was charming and her etiquette was immaculate. Her laughter was like the tolling of bells and there was this sharpness to her eyes. It wasn’t human. It was vaguely cruel but Asuka couldn’t tell for she was lost in trying to unravel whom she thought she saw before her, as perfect as the marble the most legendary sculptors would bring to life to the finest, most beautiful detail.

For just like Asuka was promised, there was a mystery about whom Gloria Tyler was exactly. What she knew. What she would tell others. And Asuka... Asuka was incurably learned and wanted to be yet even more so. It was her most important hunger. Hence why she found paradise in libraries and books and, apparently, people who resided inside secretive inner circles.

And Gloria Tyler was the most perfect person for her in that regard. She was so controlled. She gave away plenty of details about herself and yet remained detached. Elusive. Difficult to truly know, unless you were her sister but Asuka deemed that cheating and such beautiful insanity came in twos with twins, anyway.

Asuka spent splendid afternoons with Gloria, thereafter. In bed together, sometimes studying literature and poetry, sometimes studying each other with bated breath. Slowly drawing closer and closer until they touched. The sparks were magnificent and Gloria’s feline eyes gleamed. Asuka swallowed and she kissed back. Hard. Mad. She was in love with the enigma which was Gloria Tyler.

It was on her bed, kissing her, that Asuka realised that paradise didn’t just have to be people. It could be a person. One sole person and she thought that Gloria might have been that person for her.

Despite being so close, as they kissed, they had never felt far apart. Asuka’s heart pounded as she tried to conceive every fathom which belonged in the liquid gold of Gloria’s eyes and the cyanide of her hair. She couldn’t, of course. It was impossible. So, she let the beauty of her lover bathe over her, awash with the sunlight streaming in from outside in the dormitory which the Tyler sisters belonged. A dormitory unlike any other.

It was violet.

A colour which was neither blue, yellow, or red but rather some putrid mix of them all. Its own colour. Vibrant, like a gash or other open wound. Not like the flowers but rather like carnage.

Violent.

There came another night in which the Professor held one of his finest feasts for his finest students and it was there, he unveiled his Arc Area Project and Asuka listened intently whilst Gloria held her hand. There was a fang to her smile whenever she glanced longways at Asuka. Asuka who absorbed it all, with a heart willing to believe in perfection which could be achieved, as she was allowed a glimpse into the beautiful mechanisms of the Professor’s mind before all her other peers who did not belong to this violet (violent) faction inside the school.

It sounded sublime. Wonderful. Like paradise.

Paradise was the Arc Area Project. It was the point of origin. Like the Garden of Eden from whence Adam and Eve had been rejected. It was a return to the natural state of being: Standard, Fusion, XYZ, and Synchro, all returned to one, whole world.

It was not simply  _ like _ paradise. It  _ was _ paradise and the smiles which streamed from the faces of those who became the foot soldiers of the Professor, of Academia, confirmed it for Asuka. At least not until those smiles became streams of tears from a dear friend. A dear friend who took her hands and begged her to escape because she didn’t want Asuka to do horrid, evil things in the name of paradise.

And thus, paradise’s definition changed once more.

Paradise was not a place achievable by any actionable means. It was not an island laced with gorgeous, white sand beaches and surrounding by sparkling, sapphire seas. Paradise was not a school which promised all which Asuka loved. Paradise was not people. People were masked and made to do evil things in the name of righteousness. Paradise was not the Arc Area Project either. The alpha and omega were removed from each other for a reason and those other dimensions did not deserve to be destroyed.

There was one more definition of what paradise was not or perhaps should have been, as well that Asuka grappled with as well.

Paradise was not a single person. A lover. Paradise was not Gloria Tyler.

Those afternoons of splendour, enjoying each other’s company, studying the academic greats and each other, turned sordid with what Asuka knew now.

Gloria Tyler’s paradise was poison. A propagandistic perdition. Yet despite knowing that, that did little to quell the heartbreak which Asuka grappled with as she tried to rest in new quarters which promised, at the very least, food and a smile... 


	6. Ritual

“Hm,” Miyu murmured, “so this is how Ai-chan sees you?”

Her voice was musing as she continued to look over the card that Aqua had procured for her to admire. Or analyse. Likely only admire as Miyu didn’t have much interest in the game, anymore. Not totally surprising to Aqua given the baggage that it had caused her, but it was slightly disappointing. She had wanted to be battle partners with her Origin after all but at least she had Aoi to sate that side of her.

Still, Aqua was embarrassed by how playful Miyu sounded. “It’s not very flattering, is it?” she said, squirming where she stood.

“Ayup. It’s a huge-ass scary monster.” Miyu chirruped.

Aqua hid her face in her hands.

Aoi pouted. “Miyu.” she scolded her girlfriend.

“Aw, Aqua, I didn’t mean it like that. I just so happen to think that huge-ass scary monsters are kind of cool.”

Again, that did little to quell Aqua’s anxiety over being perceived as such. It also didn’t help that she very much did not approve of Miyu’s vulgar language.

The card in question was Ai’s Ritual Monster, his Water Levithan. He had loaned it to Aqua because she had mentioned in passing that her girls were curious about it. Well, Miyu was curious about. Aoi had seen it in action, full throttled, when she and her brother had duelled Ai in the Link VRAINS. But, when it was just a card, it wasn’t so scary, and she couldn’t blame Miyu for being curious about it. Whilst Miyu was, currently, on the sidelines, she was inching closer to returning to the game as her confidence was very much bolstered by having Aoi and Aqua around.

Since Miyu was being unproductive, and densely so, Aoi thought that she would attempt at cheering Aqua up.

“Leviathans are very powerful monsters from biblical mythology. They rule the seas and often represent a form of order or triumph. I think there’s a beauty in that.” Aoi said, piping up.

But Aoi’s words didn’t exactly work either. Whilst she meant them to ring kind, and she had embellished them to exemplify her intentions, they did not. If anything, it made Aqua feel worse because, curious to verify Aoi’s word, in an instant, Aqua discovered all sorts of hellish things across the various, biblical mythologies.

“I think Hiyari is a better reflection of your relationship with Ai. Despite everything, you’re still friends and that’s the main thing, I think.” Aoi said.

“I don’t think Hiyari is that much of an improvement...” Aqua mumbled. She had been standing before, ankles deep in Miyu’s Duel Disc, but now she had finally sunk down so she could keel inwards on herself in her self-inflicted despair.

“Hiyari...” Miyu murmured aloud, eyes wandering to the sky. “Which one is Hiyari again?”

“The blue one.” Aqua said stupidly. “Her name is an onomatopoeia referencing the word ‘chilly’. Does Ai perceive me as cold?”

“The cute blue one.” Aoi piped up, once more.

“But nowhere near as cute as you, I’m sure.” Miyu added, setting her hand, the card, down on the plasticky surface of the table.

Both girls reached across the table and went to pet Aqua’s diminutive little head at once. Miyu giggled as she bumped Aoi’s fingers with her own. She stroked Aqua’s floating antennae whilst Aoi gently prodded along the curve of Aqua’s spine. She reacted positively to that, shoulders rolling out and her eyes were no longer squished with misery. She cooed, slightly, at that.

“I don’t think you should concern yourself too much with others and their perceptions,” Aoi said with the wisdom of someone who knew all too well what such horrible pitfalls are, “and content yourself with your own perceptions.”

“You’re cute, and kind, and caring.” Miyu said, almost immediately ruining Aoi’s advice. “You’re our one of a kind little Aqua and we both love you very much for it, I’m sure Ai does too. Just not the same way and that’s okay.”

“Thank you, girls, both of you.” Aqua said, holding her own hands as she allowed herself to be fondly preened by both her partners.

Hearing the genuine appreciation for their assurance in her voice, warmed Aoi and Miyu’s hearts.


	7. Fragrant

There was a scent which haunted Rio’s dreams. Lingering, meandering, melancholy, listless. It was of irises and saltwater. She disliked it because she was sensitive to the stellar point of extrasensory.

“What did it feel like to be an agent of the Barian World?” Rio idly asked Aika, one splendour-soaked afternoon, dripping with sunshine streaked rain.

Snip. “I’m not sure. Like a dream, perhaps?” replied Aika, never once lifting her eyes from the arrangement in front of her.

The thought made Rio’s mind muse on the abyss; of snakes for hair and to be of lapis lazuli flecked eyes and yet more marine winds murmuring. Yes, she thought to herself in the frigid silence of the otherwise empty room, with its tatami mats and countless vases, it was like a dream.

“And when you hypnotise people, is that like a dream, as well?” Rio inquired.

“Of course not, Kamishiro,” Aika laughed, “that is like a nightmare. To be forced to relinquish control. Can you think of anything scarier?”

“I see.”

Nightmares. Not dreams. One does not drown in dreams. Suffocated and screaming. But they do in nightmares; in reality. Rio understood her feelings better now, even if her heart did beat, afraid, beneath her breast. She wronged her hands and she thanks Hanazoe for her company. She took her leave.

That night, Rio was not in the throes of that fragrance again. She did not smell her fears in the sea. Nor did she feel the ferocity of fire on her skin. She proceeded to have a calm, dreamless night and the same could nearly be said of the morning which followed.

It, too, was calm, tranquil, but her heart yearned for something she could not yet quell. It was not of the body. She didn’t want to eat and she didn’t. Her head was airy. She was dazed. Dazey. Daisy. But Rio didn’t mind. At least not until she caught scent of yet another fragrance which would bottle her feelings.

But this scent was not of the sea. Of water.

But rather, this scent was of the land. Of earth.

It was a beautiful fragrance and Rio knew she knew it from somewhere, somewhere before but not somewhere from before time. It drove her mad all day. It sparked life in her, once more, where nothing else had. She had been living this daytime like a dream. Vague and aloof without her usual vivacity beyond a creaky smile.

This fragrance was of fruit and of blossoms. Cherries. Cherries, it was definitely cherries and beauteous bark. It threaded through the air, through the school, and Rio felt as though she were the only one who could detect it. And yet she was not afraid that it might be of extra-terrestrial origin.

It was extravagant but not extra-terrestrial but perhaps a touch celestial. It was delicate. Like a lover. It caressed all of Rio’s senses and when the early evening came, with rose petal skies and orange blossom suns, she was still in the thick of this daytime daisy daze but she found it.

Once more: snip.

A cruel smile followed. The smile of a girl who knew that iridescent insect wings were the best ones to pluck to understand the plight of being easy to torture. The smile of a girl who enjoyed having power over others and over nature itself.

“Good evening, Kamishiro.” Aika murmured in the wake of a door slid too roughly to open. “I am pleased that you can visit me again today.”

Rio, like a good little girl, drew in closer. She knelt down on one of the mats provided by the flower arrangement club. She placed her hands on her lap. With a blink, the room became smaller or perhaps she had come nearer. To Aika.

Who never - rarely - acknowledged anyone’s presence but maybe Rio wasn’t anyone.

“I brewed something for you.” Aika said.

“Tea?” Rio guessed.

“No, not quite.” Aika said but she was amused by the sudden playfulness between them, so she encouraged it. “One more guess, please.”

“A panacea.” Rio tried again to guess.

Aika laughed into her sleeve. She adored that guess. “Well, I suppose if you drank it, it would cure all your ails. After all, you cannot be troubled if you are dead.”

“I give up then.” Rio said.

“Boo, your no fun.” Aika pouted. “But I brewed a perfume for you.”

Rio’s eyes sparkled. She held her breath.

“Here, hold out your wrist, my dear.” Aika instructed and Rio obeyed.

Aika’s hands were like spiders on her skin. Arachnids that never got the chance the explore Rio’s blued, dying skin when she had died that first time so long ago; never given proper, primrose funerary rites, no wonder she became a spectre of the sea and the stars. Though she was ice cold all the same.

Aika was gentle as she examined Rio’s veins and the various lines circling on her palms, holding her fingers and curious of how stainless Rio was. She was truly the most precious jewel that there ever could be.

Aika sought a bottle by her side. Rio hadn’t even noticed it earlier but she hadn’t been noticing much of anything today. It was a bluish purple and made of glass. It held a cork in its mouth as a gag and its liquid contents were not pungent when Aika ripped that cork free.

Aika then gathered her sleeve and let the fabric crumple in her hand. With her other hand, she poured her perfume forth and allowed it to soak. The dark pink turned maroon when the perfume made contact with it. She set down the bottle and Rio idly watched. Yet her heart grew excited, as though beating for the first time in hours, as Aika dabbed the fabric on Rio’s wrist.

“How do you like the smell?” Aika asked. “I don’t think I have much of a future in the chemistry of perfumes but it is a fun little hobby to complement my others.”

Aika gently let go of Rio’s hand and Rio missed the sensation of such eerie warmth in her fingertips. Cautiously, Rio brought her hand to her face; fingers curled in, Rio breathed in the fragrance that Aika had bestowed upon her.

“It is a blend of pure, melted snow, lilies, and cranberries, with complimentary base notes to accentuate such scents.” Aika said. “I do hope you find it pleasant; and agreeable with your body, perfume can be so fickle like that.”

Rio was lost in such the tender fragrance. “Thank you. I love it.” There was a vibrancy in her voice which had been absent the whole day.

“I am delighted to hear that.” Aika said and show bowed her head to Rio. “You were my inspiration for that particular scent.”

“Thank you, Aika.” Rio said once more.

And her hand reached out for Aika’s. She gently pulled it in and Aika came closer as well. Their lips connected and Rio came alive. She awoke and she lived in that moment, clearly. With all the clarity of the purest ice. Aika kisses back, eyes closed, and her eyelashes fluttered, moving like the stick legs of beetles, and she kissed back. Rio found it funny that a girl who could put whomever she wanted to sleep with that snip, snip, snip of her floral hypnosis could make Rio, anyone, feel so alive, so awake.

She relished it.


	8. Gorgeous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This probably leans closer to M than T but it feels too mild to be M so proceed with caution with sexual things are squicky.

Pandor was, by no means at all, Kyoko’s brainchild.

Therefore, there wasn’t a true attachment of a nigh Pygmalion origin connecting her to Pandor. However, Kyoko would admit that there was a spark, an ignition, of attraction which wasn’t founded on that principle alone because it was an alluring thought. Fantasy, really.

Although, Kyoko was responsible for circles upon circles of Pandor’s circuitry. Perhaps she could have such a Greek claim to Pandor, with her name evocative of the chunky charm bracelets Kyoko had worn in her girlhood and of the girl who had opened the box which had unleashed all sorts of horrors unto the world.

An android, such as Pandor, dearest, was, essentially, a box. A box of the worst things to some and a box of best things to Kyoko.

Kyoko had a self-admitted perversion of a rather specific type. She didn’t know where it started or where it ended but she certainly found revelry in it for as long as she could remember, there was something about thick dotted lines, showing wear to cut and fold and crease was something that she relished. Especially on or applied to humans.

In her youth, she very much wanted to do that to humans, as well. She remembered being praised for having such steady hands and for having such a dedication to her steady studies but when she was drawn into a position inside the personnel of the Hanoi Project, Kyoko realised that her peculiar cruelty was not suited to the world that her parents and teachers, blissfully unaware of the project altogether, would have liked.

There, in such torturous and electrical reveries, Kyoko realised that plucking butterflies out of the air and picking apart their wings as a toddler had greater ramifications on her personality, and her adulthood, than anyone could have estimated.

But, fortunately, Kyoko had Pandor to take such unscrupulous desires out on.

Putting Pandor together had been as fun as such an intensive project could be. She was Ryoken’s project but something so complicated, so unworldly, so unwieldy could not be undertaken alone and he regrettably, reluctantly, understood that. So, help was given here and there. She was built out of all the guilt that they had, ruminating for ten years and she was built out of what had been stolen from their partners at SOL Tech. She was a new breed of machine and she was gorgeous.

The Pandor which resulted of their flimsy blueprints, some even so flimsy as to not exist, a nether of digitality, was perfect, in every way. An eerie smile and even eerier fuchsia eyes. She was gentle in a way which was supernatural despite being science fiction made fact.

She was all long legs and painted steel to look human alike but not quite. She was all long legs and painted steel to look womanlike, specifically – not just any human, a female of the species, precisely. She was of an alien elegance which drew from humanity and nature. She had the lensed eyes of an all knowing yet ever puny insect, like a butterfly, for example.

Pandor was as nigh as perfection could be in this imperfect name of mortals. Hence why she was named for the most imperfect one of all, whose curiosity doomed all her kin and she lived the guilt ever after.

And all that was worth little as she was sent to her near death, as dead as a machine, no matter how drawing upon sentient, could be. She had fallen from the height of one of mankind’s greatest achievements: defying gravity, breaking the sound barrier, the accomplishment embodied by the steel bird. A jet. She was smashed to pieces and whipped about in unkind winds and torn apart.

Her entrails were of motor oil and electrical wiring. Sparking and threatening to catch light, in lines of blue and red plastic coatings. The steel cage of her chest had become the most perfectly broken box. All ragged arms and jagged legs. An eye which hung from the hole in what was once her head. Putting her together was sublime but it paled, paled so viscerally, in comparison to how Kyoko felt when they were tasked to putting her back together _again_.

She had been eviscerated by her duel with Ai and she had been recovered. In pieces. More of her remained in her remains than they expected but she did, functionally, have to be rebuilt from the ground up but she had become even closer of an android – of a box, of being all dotted lines and slashes which needed to be reconnected and changed – to Kyoko.

All alone, when it was not her turn to rest but when it was her turn to work, Kyoko was happily trying to put their humpty dumpty robot back together again. Sliding her fingers along her edges, smoothing them down, drawing them in and wishing that she could put her tongue to the battery between what was left of Pandor’s legs.

Pandor, of course, not minding one 8bit bit because she had never been turned on like this before and she rather enjoyed it.


	9. Sensation

Life was unfair. That’s all Carly could think right now. That and: breathe. She really needed to breathe as she bent over herself, hands clamped on her knees, panting horridly to the side of the road because even though she had sprinted, she had arrived too late.

About twenty minutes ago, Carly had been vegetating her car, like usual; feet up on the dashboard, one hand in a bag of chips, and the other on her phone. She had been scrolling Duelstagram, not even with the comfort of air conditioning, just a window down a few cracks and it wasn’t even breezy, cramped and bored and the next, a flash of inspiration! The next big scoop!

She hadn’t gotten a tip or anything. She had just had a brilliant moment of visual recollection. She had pressed play on some video that someone had put on her feed. In the corner of it, the views were rocketing up by thousands by even shorter than the second. It was getting all the likes and all the heart-eyed emojis.

It was a video of some girl with a guitar, cute and country with bouncy gingery coloured hair. She was humming and a strumming with a brilliant voice ringing through the tinny video. Gosh, why did Duelstagram have to _ruin_ video quality like that?

But even so, Carly was certain that this girl, about seventeen at the youngest, was on the brink of being discovered. She was going to be the next country pop sensation to take New Domino.

And Carly wanted to be the reporter to get this street act’s name to the big screen first.

It felt as though everything should be right. She had fate in her corner. Her cards, this morning, had predicted that something sudden would break the drudgery of the day today and this was it!

This should have been it...

Instead, it wasn’t. It was just the same old same old but Carly. She was the second, or maybe third or fourth or more realistically twenty seventh, person on the field and all she could do was watch, wistful with a breaking heart, as fucking Angela Raines is the one to take the story first and to the top.

Angela thinks she’s all that and a bag of chips. It got on Carly’s nerves, but she drew in closer anyway. The interview seemed to be just about wrapping up.

“Once again, this is Angela Raines,” she said and she dramatically flipped her hand over, towards the girl, “with up and coming singer-songwriter Melissa Claire. Give us an outro, MC.”

“With pleasure, darlin’.” she brightly replied, and she took the request.

She was really good, Carly thought to herself and the acoustic guitar absolved her, at least briefly, of a lot of the pent-up jealousy that she had unto Angela. It was a nice sound, kind of hollow and slow but Carly could drift along to it, unthinking as she watched the cameraman pack up and Angela set aside her newsworthy persona.

Angela’s eyes lit up deviously when she saw Carly spacing out. She walked up to her and pouted.

“Aw, poor thing, shame you weren’t here quick enough.” she teased.

“Oh, break a leg, Angela.” Carly spat.

Angela laughed. “That means good luck, not bad luck, Carly.”

“Whatever.” Carly huffed, crossing her arms against her chest. “One day, you’ll be eating my dust, Angie.”

Angela’s brow twitched and Carly grinned. She knew that hit a nerve. She revelled in how annoyed Angela was, even if she did mask it masterfully.

“I will be seeing you, Carlotta.” Angela said.

She flicked her long, gold hair over her shoulder, irritable, and it was like slow motion. Carly caught a whiff of the shampoo that she used it. It smelt terribly expensive, and heavenly too. Like vanilla and honey and coconut and Carly was in awe of it. In awe of Angela, really. For all their cat fights and petty exchanges, deep down, Carly found it incredibly difficult to be truly mad or hateful towards her.

Angela stormed off so gracefully that Carly couldn’t help but watch. All whilst that acoustic guitar remained somewhere in the background. She sighed and blushed. Even when their exchanges went usually as sour as that one, Carly was powerless to heart’s flights of fancy all the same. She didn’t even have the willpower to yell out to Angela that her name really was just Carly; it wasn’t Carlotta or Carla or even Caroline.

Behind her, the guitar strumming stopped. Not melodramatically or anything but tastefully. Applause followed and caught Carly’s attention once more where she had zoned out thinking about what if... just what if, one day, when everything was going her way, maybe she and Angela could be friends and maybe even more, over champagne and fine clothes but until then, Carly would be dressed like a dag and toting a reusable water bottle full of public hydration station water around.

It was almost miserable.

Carly sighed again and idly watched as the crowd around her, she wasn’t sure when so many people had drawn in but maybe they had always been here. Merely perturbed by the presence of Angela and her cameraman, not allowed to come in closer until now. These people clapped and Carly felt blessed. This was an important moment for Melissa, over there, and it was a shame that Angela hadn’t stuck around for it.

Melissa Claire took her bows and the crowd began to dissipate. Her stomach rumbled and Carly wondered if she wanted to have beef or chicken instant ramen later for dinner. She turned to leave but Melissa yelled out to her:

“Oi, Carlotta!” she yelled.

Carly pathetically sighed and shuffled back closer again. “Yes?” she murmured. “Also, my name isn’t actually Carlotta, it’s just-”

“I don’t care. This isn’t a free concert, payin’ customers only, thank you very much, so give me something or else.” Melissa barked at her ruthlessly.

“Okay...” Carly mumbled.

She reached into her back pocket and gave Melissa what was left of her loose change. It looked like she would have to have unflavoured instant ramen tonight because she was too broke now to afford flavouring.

At least she wasn’t so broke that she couldn’t afford wondering what life will be like when it’s finally fair. When she can sip champagne in a private room and have Angela be nice to her in the process. Until then, Carly could only sigh.


	10. Genuine

Miyu read the pleasantries over again and inside of those beautifully scripted characters, she wondered what the meaning between the words were. Was she projecting? Pining? Or was it something else entirely as she wished so dearly to answer truthfully.

As part of the literature curricular for her class, every student in the room had been paired with another student miles and miles away, out in the country; far away from the hustle and bustle of city life. Therefore, so different that they may have been from different countries as most the brats in the school had never been taken so far inland and to the rural. Not to mention, the two schools were so different demographically; one stratified far above the other, as the way of private versus public. It was supposed to be a tame cultural exchange but nothing could ever be tame with Miyu.

She was a hopeless romantic to put it politely. 

At the first sign of niceness, she was prone to fall head over feels. Girls, guys, it didn’t matter to her; only the smile on their face or the loveliness of their voice and this girl from the countryside, she sounded and seemed like the loveliest of all.

Her name was Kamishirakawa Kiku. She was best friends with a Homura Takeru person; he was assigned to Miyu’s friend Kasumi but Kasumi had received a grand total of one letter from him, where Miyu had been in a rally of five each with Kiku so far, and it was the bare minimum requirement and barely lucid. Kiku had apologised profusely about this in her letters to Miyu; she loved her friend deeply, he was a good boy, just a little distracted. Miyu wasn’t buying it but through that, Miyu could ascertain that Kiku was a very kind and caring person.

The way she wrote was beautiful. She was poetic in her turn of phrase without meaning too. Ergo, she was candid rather than pretentious. She asked genuine and sincere questions about Miyu and her life whilst revealing tender moments from her own. She wanted an earnest connection between them despite the distance. Miyu wanted that too. Very much so but she was scared.

Up until now, Kiku had asked questions which were general. What was the weather like? What subjects did Miyu excel at? What did she struggle with academically; can she lend study tips? It was all adorably helpful and Miyu cherished the sweetness of it all but now they had moved to pop culture; as innocuous as it all.

Does Miyu-san enjoy music, movies, or novels? I like books, somewhat and play karuta. I don’t like very many card games; I especially don’t like Duel Monsters very much…

Miyu wanted to laugh. Duel Monsters was her life blood, whether she liked it or not given her history with the game. Whenever she needed a thrill, she would put a rare recording of a Playmaker match on and she chased all the Charisma Duellists gossip as well; she loved Blue Angel the most.

But it was all so bitter. Miyu didn’t want to show Kiku that side of herself. She didn’t even show it to anyone; not her friends, not her parents, not even her therapist. So she was very much not going to clue the lovely Kamishirakawa Kiku that she was actually a rather blood thirsty duellist. She had to be, to survive above the loneliness and electrocution, and starvation she had been put through as a child. All whilst crusading for her best friend and their mutual saviour, the Blue Angel from that splendid storybook tha Aoi adored.

So, as to not ruin the illusion of being a normal and palatable young woman, Miyu swallowed all her pining and decided that it was in her head. She wouldn’t make it Kiku’s problem, even though Miyu knew she would be up later, at one am, yearning for a face to face conversation with this polite pen pal of hers, venting all the problems that she had.

And, in the meantime, whilst the teacher gave them time in class to reply to their dear friends, Miyu would write - allude to - her favourite storybook character without coming on too strong lest her troubles bled into the ink and was strewn onto paper. It was unfair. Miyu really did think that she like liked this girl; she wanted to be vulnerable but she really shouldn’t. 


	11. Honey

She dripped with sweetness.

Dulcet tones clung to the very aura in which she projected. She had candy coloured hair and the sweetest smile. All around her, a floral scent floated and Serena couldn’t help but be enamoured with every bit of Yuzu. She was wonderful. Marvellous.

But Serena wasn’t sweet. 

She wasn’t gentle. She stomped about where Yuzu nearly skipped. She wasn’t the type who could smile so sweetly and bat her eyelashes. If life was a box of chocolates, then Serena was the disgustingly bitter dark chocolate that no one could stand to touch and she would know. She hadn’t been touched with kindness for a long, long time. Not until she met, and became infatuated with, Yuzu. Sweet, kind Yuzu….

Of course, Yuzu wasn’t that type of person all the time. Perpetually sweet and without fault. She could be bitter. She could be sour. Most of all, and perhaps most important of all, Yuzu could be citric.

Regardless, Serena loved her for all her flavours and tastes. Every mood, she learned something new about Yuzu and the way she saw the world. It was nearly rosy. Not quite. Not anymore. Not with what she had learned in Synchro and what she had learned in Fusion and what she had learned in Pendulum; not Standard. Pendulum. She was wisened, but that wasn’t a bad thing.

Serena could learn a thing or two or many from Yuzu. 

She could learn to be kind. Learn to be a friend to people. And so on and so forth. Perhaps she could even learn to love the way that Yuzu did; with those precious smiles and heartfelt gestures. All things alien to young Serena who had been kept at arm’s distance from her peers, groomed to be the perfect piece of a perfect daughter from a perfect life no more. 

From Serena’s observations, if eating ice cream by the carton in the dark, watching movies with pretty people having pretty meltdowns, with Yuzu on the lounge of her family living room, could be trusted then there was one easy little thing which she could do with her mouth to help convey that she really liked Yuzu.

Not kissing.

Kissing was still too advanced for her. She who was gawky and awkward and the intricate ritual of feeling other people’s skin was still fisticuffs with her. No, there was another thing she could do with her mouth. Her tongue and voice, really. She could say nice things. Call people nice things.

And the nice things that Serena associated with Yuzu were things like gardens. Beautiful, green gardens with flowers which flowered with plush petals right after when spring had sprung and the petrichor of the latest spray of rain was still in the dewy air. She thought of flights of fancy with fairies with insect eyes. She thought of the birds and bees and the process of pollination. She thought of the sweetest thing which was thereby culminated from all these nice things.

With her heart beating in her chest, her fists by her side, with her lips twitching, Serena called out to Yuzu, one day soon: 

“Honey, can I call you honey… when we’re alone, when it’s just us?” 

Yuzu laughed. A dulcet and melodious laugh. She drew in closer, humming, thinking to herself. 

Serena’s stomach knotted like liquorice bows.

“Only if I can call you kitten in return.” Yuzu told Serena.

Serena smiled. Awkward but thrilled. Her eyes alight and Yuzu reached out, took her hand. She ran her thumb over Serena’s knuckles, soothingly and she smiled.

“That sounds really…” Serena’s voice trailed off and she couldn’t think of the right word. Nice? Lovely? Pleasant?

“Sweet?” Yuzu suggested.

Serena nodded in agreement; discreetly demure.


	12. Adoration

Cyber Tutu had the opportunity of a lifetime. And she was very determined to squander it because it was, for what she believed, to be better. She didn’t know why or how but all of a sudden there were humans in  _ their _ world.

Their world of monsters and magic and mayhem.

It couldn’t be more perfect. At least hypothetically, anyway.

The human world was fun. The duels there were so much more polite than the duels of their world. In the human world, even a comparatively weak card such as herself had the potential to be strong. Part of a team, something bigger than herself alone. 

Asuka made for such a lovely commander. Or wizard in the old tongue which had fallen out of usage nowadays. Regardless, she was elegant and thoughtful. Her fingers were delicate and her voice was firm. Her actions were conscionable and perfected from study and practice. Cyber Tutu could swoon at the mere thought of the young woman, and she did but there were so many more aspects and elements of Asuka that ought to be praised as well. Cyber Tutu had all but endless adoration for Asuka….

She cherished all her partners, even if, until now at the very least, only saw them as inscribed cards. Hence why Cyber Tutu had the unforeseen chance of a lifetime.

It wasn’t unusual for the foolish, like herself, to fall in love with the untouchable. It was the nature of those cursed with claws and fangs and a humanity just a little bit to the left of where it should have been. Strength and weakness, in this arena at the very least, was irrelevant as the matters of the heart, however strange and bizarre, could level all. The weak could remain strong where even the strong would weaken but it was ultimately all the same. Far too many, Cyber Tutu included, were contentious players in the worst game of them all.

At least her friends were kind. They didn’t admonish or diminish her feelings; they didn’t call her weak or foolish for falling in love with their Tenjoin Asuka. Hell, they were the ones pushing her closer to turning those feelings into actions and then, hopefully, into relationships because somehow, the dimensions had been defied and humans had been brought here.

It took very powerful magic to physically cross dimensions like this and from what they of the Cyber Girl clan, archetype, could tell, this was the will of someone terrifying. It was undeniably a bad omen as humans were ill-equipped at surviving the harsh landscapes of the Monster World, but that didn’t mean that they had to be hopeless in this peculiar situation. Good was to be made but no matter how Etoile or Blader, or any of the stronger ladies of their hierarchy, pushed her, Tutu refused.

She was too scared.

Well, maybe not scared. More like… adorably nervous. The thought of Asuka was more than enough to get all her circuits buzzing and then going haywire resulting in knocking knees and uncontrollable, dizzying  pirouettes . All of which sent her frantic and eventually knocked out, to the amused laughter of her older sisters. They found her so very precious and Asuka did too. They could feel it in their cyborg stitches. Why wouldn’t she?

Cyber Tutu could think of a reason or two. 

First of all, Asuka didn’t even realise that they were sentient. 

Second of all, she couldn’t even detect the rare Monsters with just enough power to phase through to the other world, even coincidentally or tangentially and nigh imperceptible. Asuka was clever but unfortunately she wasn’t that clever which was totally unfair since those stupid Ojamas were constantly parading their Manjoume around as the pinnacle of humanity with his gift of the sight.

Third of all, even if those prior two very good reasons weren’t even reasons at all, surely Asuka would rather be loved by someone just as strong as she. If she were a monster, she would have two thousand base attack as a bare minimum, be worth half a dozen stars and have a killer effect to boot. Cyber Tutu was certain. That meant that Asuka deserved someone equal to her. Someone like her ace monster, Cyber Angel Benten; not some puny pip squeak in a ruddy coloured wig with twiggy, ribboned legs. 

But Benten didn’t see it that way, just because Tutu did.

She was the leader of their group and she was sternly kind. Warm the way only a machine body could be warm with the flicker and glow of humanity somewhere within her very electric core. She encouraged Tutu’s love, believing in it when Tutu didn’t.

It was a true shame and Cyber Tutu did see it. She was just scared. Now really wasn’t the time; Asuka’s life was in danger, this was no time for romance in practicality, even if it was a chance with the luck of being one in more than a million for Cyber Tutu. Besides, she was intolerably convinced. 

Surely Asuka wouldn’t like her back, yeah…?


	13. Sentimental

Her mind was open. Hence why she had the arrangements not only made but fulfilled to the present detail. However, it was only her mind which was open. Her legs - her body - were most certainly not but not to the offence or detriment to her partner, thankfully. 

In her frigidity, Himika sat between Yoko’s legs. Hers were pursed together, almost as tightly pursed as her fuschia lips, her immaculate hands in her lap, in the creases of her pencil skirt. But Yoko was devilish; she wished to steal Himika away from even herself, like some thief and yet, was so far from brutish like Himika had been expecting. Yoko pried one hand of Himika’s away from herself. The sleeve of Himika’s suit jacket loosened, fell further down her forearm and Yoko kissed her inner wrist whilst interlacing their fingers.

“I’m surprised.” Himika murmured. “I have mistaken thoughts about your character.”

“You freeze, huh? When you are scared? Fight or flight? Or… freeze and fawn?”

“It’s easier to relinquish control, sometimes.” Himika mused, thinking of her son and the spears that he had taken to his father; her husband. Things that she allowed to come to pass if only because of her own cowardice. Her own fear of conflict.

“Can’t relate.” Yoko mumbled.

Himika laughed. Yoko was warm. It eased her somewhat away from the guilt that she ought to be feeling. Yoko played with her fingers whilst kissing what little bare skin, so cold, was available to her. Himika felt Yoko twist her wedding ring around. The sensation alarmed her. She flicked her icy gaze towards her hand; she almost didn’t recognise it in the tepid clutch of another woman.

“You’re still wearing it, huh?” Yoko asked.

To that, Himika had no comment to make. No remark to exchange. Not yet at least but Yoko was offended. If anything, she was intrigued by this further cold silence of Himika’s.

All because her heart merely ached with cold sentimentality over it. That luxe gold band, the vines and the tendrils of it, the inscription, the fact that she always wore it no matter how open her mind became to ideas which bordered ok betrayal to her betrothed.

“I can’t feel one on you.” Himika came to say. She half twisted where she sat so that she could view Yoko’s face. 

It was almost empty; almost blank. “We are husband and wife in our own way.” she merely replied.

“I understand.” Himika replied, curt.

“I’m sure you understand very well.” Yoko murmured.

She put her mouth, with her lips smeared with a cheap crayon-like glaze, to Himika’s hand. Her palm. And kissed it with closed eyes. Himika could feel the tender brush of Yoko’s long eyelashes on her aged palms. She felt her warm breath and sighed. Yoko chuckled, impressed more so with herself than with Himika.

“It’s been a while, has it?” Yoko asked.

“Yes, unfortunately.” Himika truthfully replied.

“If you were my wife, I would ravish you every night; at the drop of a hat, whenever you wanted, wherever you wanted.” Yoko told her; her voice reverberating on Himika’s old bones.

She chuckled. “You are an utter rogue, Mz Sakaki.”

“I try.” Yoko smirked and Himika could feel such smugness in her hands.

It was almost damaging. Damaging enough to degrade gold and vows. To turn them into meaningless metal and meaningless memories. It was better than the misery; the melancholy, Himika felt - felt free of for the first time in genuine years. It was reliving but guiltily so but Himika indulged, cherished, such traitorous feelings as she allowed Yoko to kiss her. 

Yoko pinched Himika’s ring between her coarse fingers. Her mouth moved to Himika’s neck. Her lips to Himika’s pulse. It was slow and tender but Yoko was determined to make it quicken. To bring it to the full force this decadent woman in her sour perfumes deserved.

“Do you remember our wedding?” Yoko asked.

“What a funny question…” Himika mused and for a second, Yoko was uncertain if Himika would play along. But the way her free hand raised, even though it was uncertain in its course and affection, fondled Yoko’s bushy hair. “Of course. It was in the summer.”

Yoko smiled to herself. A smile with a helluva lotta edge. She would have said - she was imagining - the winter as she touched this woman. Kissing her deeply and with a matrimony unbolted. 

“It was lovely, wasn’t it?” Himika sighed, her nostalgia for the unbidden event was warm. She was finally warm as she shifted slightly, her heels clicking as she spread apart her legs. But Yoko remained firm as she finally elicited what she wanted from Himika.

“Yes, it sure was.” Yoko said. “Tell me more. More of that day in the summer.”

“With pleasure.” Himika murmured.

She closed her eyes to the pleasure. She closed her eyes to the spring just beyond the window where they made promises to each other about wifely duties of ravishment; after all, this ring and her hand and her body belonged to the woman now and she had a way with words and loyalties and other fantasies which could not exist outside this velveteen rendezvous. It was sublime. 


	14. Crown

Anzu had been warned to be on her best behaviour by Jounouchi when he passed on the message, in person because it was a very personal topic, to go and visit Shizuka at the hospital. Anzu had wondered about what he meant but the grim look in his eyes meant that he didn’t mean to behave courteously, as her etiquette was usually perfect. He had meant to be bright. Chipper. Cheerful.

It was getting serious. Very serious, Anzu realised when she passed all the other members of this particular ward of the hospital. There were not many people here; especially not people who were Shizuka’s age; about sixteen, seventeen or so. A lot of the other patients seemed very fragile; they required mobility devices and there was a general air of morbid tranquillity.

Yet, they all flashed smiles, genuine and kind, at Anzu as she made her way through the rabbit warren corridors of the hospital, in search of Shizuka’s door. Her heart thumped when she finally found it. She knocked on it and Shizuka’s blithe voice was quick to ring out across the room.

“Yes? Who is it?”

Anzu could viscerally imagine the utter smile which Shizuka must have on her face right now. It was strange but such a wonderful image felt sullied by the knowledge that this occasion was special for a good many reasons but none of those reasons rather good.

She opened it up, stepped inside and smiled weakly: “It’s just me, Shizuka-chan.”

“Oh, you’re never just you.” Shizuka pouted, hands on her hips.

There was colour in her cheeks, Anzu noticed as she stepped further inside. She found that reliving as she joined Shizuka at her bedside but up close, Anzu could see that Shizuka was rather frayed. Her hair was limp; her eyes were murky, but her smile outshone them both, hiding her fragility.

“So, what’s up?” Anzu asked. “Jounouchi personally delivered your message.”

“That’s good. I asked him to.” Shizuka said.

“He’s weirdly reliable like that.” Anzu half replied.

“Yeah, I love him a lot. Even when he doesn’t know the latest gossip or whatever.” Shizuka laughed too.

Anzu smiled fondly. Maybe that’s why she was here; Shizuka was just craving some regular, normal girl talk. She could handle that, easy-peasy.

“So, um, Anzu... I’ve got bit of a bucket list, you know, just in case the surgery fails. Just a few things and one of them involves you.” Shizuka rambled.

“Me?” Anzu blinked.

Oh. Perhaps not easy-peasy. Her stomach felt queasy as she waited for Shizuka to elaborate.

“Ayup.” She chirped. “I know for a fact that one day, all your dreams will come true and you’ll be getting Oscars and Grammies and you’ll be asked to host the Japan Records Awards and maybe even become Miss Japan but... but that could be years from now and I... I might not...”

It was heartbreaking, how Shizuka’s voice trailed off. Her sweet cadence was mired in frustration and grief. Anzu reached out to her; put a hand atop hers, soothingly stroking her knuckles over. Sympathy sparkled in her eyes but Shizuka wouldn’t know. She was scared to see Anzu’s beautiful blue eyes look sad and especially sad for her.

“You will. I promise.” Anzu told her.

But Shizuka shook off her voice, no matter how convinced that she sounded. “The doctors say that this next surgery won’t really make or break my longevity. If it succeeds, I’ve got another six months. If it doesn’t, I’ve got another three. I’m just grateful that I got to see Katsuya and the others graduate.”

There were tears in her eyes.

“It’s the little things...” Anzu mumbled in agreement.

“B-But onto more cheerful things.” Shizuka said. “I didn’t make you come here to make you cry or feel sad... I wanted to give you something.”

“Thank you, Shizuka-chan, that’s very sweet o-”

“Nuh-uh, let me finish. You can only have it on condition.” Shizuka interrupted Anzu.

Anzu blinked. She prickled with surprise. “What is it?”

“You have to win it. It’s going to be your very first prize awarded to you by an adoring fan. Oh, and host of a show, even if it’s imaginary and pretend.” Shizuka explained.

“Very well then.” Anzu smiled, amused. She even giggled.

Shizuka beamed. “What do you want to see most?”

“World peace.” Anzu replied.

Shizuka pouted wordlessly. Anzu felt bad but she had been unable to resist replying to that. It was the ur answer, after all. Especially since Shizuka made a direct allusion to _vision_ in her question and hers was going; just like every breath and every heartbeat that she had.

“But, in all seriousness, even if this sounds greedy: I want to see success. My success. The success of your surgery. The success of my friends. I want to see a world which is bright and vivacious and lush; a place where creativity flourishes and where the music never stops. I want to see a stage and a crowd of people, all cheering for me and me alone. I want to see success.”

“I want to see your success too, Anzu...” Shizuka smiled blithely, dazedly and her head drifted to the side.

In her serene joy, Anzu caught the shaking of Shizuka’s pupils. Anzu feared that she didn’t look like herself. Perhaps only as abstracted colours or blurry or maybe even nothing at all. That scared Anzu somewhat, but she didn’t want to express that; she didn’t know how to express that beyond dulcet tones and hums of an unwritten song’s melody.

“Well,” Shizuka began, “as the sole judge of this pageant, I can say that I am more than satisfied with this reply. It was very lovely, Anzu. And so, it is with great pleasure that I am able to gift you the Shizuka Award for Remembrance. Please accept it.”

Misty eyed, Anzu empathetically replied: “I would be honoured.” She placed a hand on her breast.

“Bum-ba-badum!” Shizuka trumpeted and she bent over to the left side of her bed. She grabbed something off the floor and handled it preciously. She raised herself back up and smiled fondly in Anzu’s direction. “For your gracious win, I have three things to give you, I hope you keep them forever.”

“I most certainly will.” Anzu assured her.

“First, your sash.” Shizuka said.

Anzu leaned in and Shizuka laced it over Anzu’s body. It zazzed up her hair with static but Anzu didn’t mind. It was made from a chain of coloured paper, alternating between peachy pinks and sunny yellows. It was a little bit bigger than Anzu was expecting as she adjusted it herself once Shizuka had hung it upon her.

“Secondly, your crown.” Shizuka continued. “You can’t be a real pageant winner or the like without one, don’t you think?”

“I agree completely.” Anzu fondly, amusedly, replied.

It, too, was made of paper. Cut up and decorated with paint; made from the same yellow paper as some of the links in her sash. It sat upon her head, a little right but she didn’t mind. Even though it was made from paper, and a whole lot of love, Anzu felt royal wearing it on her head. It felt more valuable to her than gold and jewels. Her heart swelled.

Shizuka beamed. “And, finally, your flowers.”

The final gift from Shizuka to Anzu was papercraft as well. Adorably handmade and very finely cut. The paper specially chosen to mimic the green of stems and leaves; as well as the soft, pastel colours of petals. Anzu held them in her arms, delicately, tickled by all their rustling ends.

“I love them, Shizuka-chan. They’re wonderful. I’m going to find a very special box to preserve them in, thank you.” Anzu said.

“Th-That means the world to me.” Shizuka blubbered, wiping at her eyes. “N-Now, as the recipient of the Shizuka Remembrance Award, do you have any last words? I mean- I mean, do you have a speech?”

“I would like to thank everyone who has ever supported me in my endeavours. I would not be here without each and every one of those people. Regardless of if they are still here, regardless of if they have fallen out of love with me. That is all, thanks. These people know who they are and why they are so special, but I would tell all the world if the world asked.” Anzu said.

“Oh, that’s wonderful as well, Anzu, thank you.” Shizuka said.

“No,” Anzu said, leaning in as though she were being coronated once more, “thank you.”

She pecked Shizuka’s cheek and her heart ached. It, too, felt like paper and Anzu hated herself for making the comparison, but it was true.

“I love you, Anzu, thank you for humouring me.” Shizuka whispered.

“It’s my pleasure. I love you too, Shizuka-chan. Whether this is our last chance to talk or whether this is the first of many future visits, I will always love you, Shizuka-chan.” Anzu told her, most sincerely.

Shizuka wanted to smile. She very much did but instead of curving upwards, her lips curved downwards, and she bawled with grief and gratitude. Anzu smiled, pacifyingly, unfortunately, but she tried to be strong until Shizuka could be again, as well.


	15. Innate

Aqua was taught to love, to know what love is, before she was taught anything else about herself or about her surroundings or the connection to that girl. Those girls.

Love. Defined most frequently as an intense feeling of deep affection, Aqua was inclined to agree. She saw love as intensity; intense as electric shocks and hunger, as getting up again when you couldn’t stand. It was about doing something - crusading - in the name of another. No matter how unrequited or unknown. Love was resilience and it was all powerful, it could be the difference between surviving and thriving.

And so, Aqua was taught to love because there was no force stronger than love. It drove all desire, no matter how base, like a love of food, to desires which were honourable; like the desire to make amends, to tell the truth.

It was through love that Aqua was given her special gift as an Ignis and she would cherish it because that’s what Miyu, that girl, would want because all she wanted was to love Aoi. This love, this friendship, this childhood infatuation, that is what little blue Ignises of boundless water were made of. It was what attracted the other Ignis to her, as well. They could tell she had something special, some sort of stardust in her soul, which differentiated her from they; the masculine.

When that time came, Aqua would truly come to know love.

When she glimpsed the determination in those blue eyes and when she saw the true soul beneath the glamour. Tomboyish and tenacious. She saw her. That girl. The girl who had always been out of Miyu’s reach and ergo, her own. The reason for her very being. The girl who embodied love, friendship, truth: all those things which had been the very reason that Miyu had duelled turning into the very reason that Aqua could be Aqua at all.

She had thought, if such a capricious, even fictitious, day would come, it would be somewhat different. Maybe peaceful, maybe doll-like, maybe with Miyu. Maybe not at all. And she would have thought that the only reason that she would feel any connection or kinship with this girl would be because it had not been willed, it had been programmed without any consent or input on her own part because it was the very fabric of her soul and body.

Aqua was wrong.

Her coding was wrong.

No. That was incorrect. Her head hurt when she tried to push that boundary inside of her software. Her perception of her coding was wrong. It was without consent because it was destiny, a humanlike destiny if their myths were to be believed, to love this specific human being. She had been given the script, but it had come without annotations and specifications to explain the emotion and humanity behind such precise lines, like knowing what love was objectively defined as. Not felt as, subjectively.

And so, Aqua almost instantly fell in love with the Zaizen Aoi in front of her. Those mere microseconds were enough for Aqua to run all the simulations she needed to know that, this was equivalent of a beating, human heart skipping a beat and experiencing infatuation and more. Best of all, it was all by her own volition.

That is what impressed her most about her feelings. She often felt caged by others, even literally at times, because she was given roles and responsibilities but even outside of that, Aqua was still alive. She still had free will and in it, amongst all those beautiful and ugly possibilities of life, with all its sprawling and infinite outcomes, she was free to want Aoi in many different ways. All of this was innate to her, so preciously so in its mathematical and chaotic preciseness.

To want her hand, to be touched tenderly by them, consoled. To want her love and her partnership. Be it within duelling or outside of it and no one could call Aqua wrong for it because there was imperfection. There was only imperfection.

Aqua could barely believe it but she knew she could, she had to, because it was true. Not even she could escape her own gift; her own perceptions. She was bound inside the coding and programming which dictated that she could not lie. Though, she could discolour it, slightly, if information had not been sufficiently provided.

When she saw that girl, she understood her own intensities in her own soul. She was not some extension of a human being. She was her own being. An Ignis. And she knew love for she was made of it. Her circuits sparked softly when she explained her plight and her history to this girl. Her soul ached when she saw the girl beneath the electronic illusions mourn and grieve, wondering if she could have prevented it, had she been truthful.

Aqua didn’t know. Her existence was inevitable, she saw. Humans “liked” progress, after all. They “liked” to play god. Therefore, the Ignis would have always come to exist and that likely meant that even if Miyu had been saved, another child would have been taken in her place. A child who was just as likely to have been Aoi as anyone else so unfortunate. Or at least that is what Aqua’s own self was permitted to believe without error or detriment.


	16. Dandelion

Mieru didn’t want to admit but she was falling out of love with the girl of En Nature but that was exactly what was happening to her and her fickle, jealous heart.

Her infatuation with Yuzu was beginning to fade low. Just like her spirits and her feelings, she crouched among the long grass and the plush clover and found what she was looking for amid the greenery. In the gentle, springtime breeze, Mieru saw it: the tell-tale bob of a cottony head; a thousand potential wishes to be sewn but on a precarious condition; she found a dandelion.

She plucked it without hesitation and then glanced to Yuzu. On the edge of the hill, she overlooked all the city, as zany and warlocked and warlike as it was, a place where four dimensions clashed, merged, became one. The success of peace binging on a flexibility some of the dimensions hadn’t known in years - not that Mieru would know. She hadn’t seen it. Not firsthand and not astrally or crystally either.

Yuzu has though and it had done something bizarre to her psyche as she now had the lived experience of all the dimensions and a fifth on as well.

Like a moth to a candle, Mieru had been drawn to Yuzu and all her blinding light. Mieru was terrified of the dark now. The dark is what consumed Yuya’s soul and she couldn’t even do so much as glance his way without feeling her knees weaken and her heart pound in some twisted, petrified version of her previous feelings unto him. She couldn’t see him and no think of how he had been, overtaken by demons and dragons like both sides of her coin, going beyond it all in defiance, or perhaps even fulfilment, of fate.

Then one look at Yuzu and Mieru fell in love. She fell in love easy and hard because she was drawn to that incandescent light inside of her. It was beautiful; Mieru couldn’t help but admire it, wishing deeply that her future would coincide with that sublime brightness. Often times, it was sweet and pale like the moon. Other times it had a springtime iridescence to it but now, Mieru realised, it was too difficult to perceive without becoming blinding and hurtful.

It had taken a while to realise, Mieru had been clad with roses for eyes for a while but once she had that revelation, it was all she could see and it was damaging her feelings, once strong and pure and wholehearted, for Yuzu.

But now they were fraying and that scared Mieru. She was eccentric and erratic and she just had a little heart which was brimming and bursting with so much love: she had to direct it somewhere and the petals of the flowers which plucked indicated that Yuzu was the one. For real this time. Or maybe that was more a self fulfilling prophecy than anything grounded in the hard realities of divination, such as the surface of jewels and in the dying light of stars thousands upon thousands of lightyears away.

And so, Mieru would turn to what she knew best. Magics which could divine the future; magics which could give her hope for change.

She stood up, amongst all that grass, with green stains on her little, knobbly knees, and she clutched onto the stem of that dandelion. She glanced to Yuzu and Yuzu seemed to be in a world of her own; some feet away from Mieru but still within earshot. She was talking to someone. To people. Mieru’s heart lurched.

Mieru took a big, big breath and her chest swelled. She held the head of her delicate dandelion to her mouth and stared at the back of Yuzu’s head. Her hair was played with by the wind from on high and there was a strange mystique about her. It had wisened, her somewhat and it gave the impression that she was always with friends and that they lingered around her even when imagined. As such, she was never alone, that girl. She was always busy, busy, busy like a bee. Her own head was a hive.

A little bit of guilt caused Mieru’s lungs to ache as she held onto her breath and on her wish. But she soon became certain, when the pressure in her temples began to beg for release. It was the right thing to do. To mend her heart; the stitch in time to save nine or so the saying goes.

She was in love with Yuzu. She was not in love with those other girls who made a home in Yuzu’s heart and soul, turning it more blinding than any sun or star. And so, Mieru wished to remain that way. In love with her. Not them. With a puff of breath, withheld with selfishness as that’s all Mieru was, she attempted to have her wish come true.

Seeds were quick to spread once the gust in Mieru’s chest. Thousands upon thousands of seeds were propelled forward, scattering around Yuzu, not touching her once, and floated on the winds which blew around them. Mieru watched, in awe, with the sunset causing the sky to crease and for Yuzu to be dyed with all the colours of it; pinks, oranges, yellows.

It was beautiful but brief as Mieru’s appreciation for the beauty of it was cut short by her desire to know if her wish would come true. She held tightly onto the dandelion and its speckled yellowy white head without four seeds still attached. Four seeds out of thousands remained, rooted to the rest of the flowery weed. So much for her wish but alas, it was how the divination demanded and how fate was meant to be for young Mieru, falling out of love again; how unlucky and without miracle.


	17. Rain

Ema hates how easy it was to love Kyoko.

She had never loved a woman or man before. She was above all the romanticism and oxytocin. She was only in it for the base; for the sex and the backstabbing. She was truly her brother’s sister and her father’s daughter in that regard. People were disposable and the easier it was to hate them, the better the consecutive one night stands were; that’s why Akira got dull so quick and became a friend more so than boyfriend. But Kyoko?

Somehow, she was different.

She really shouldn’t have been. She should have been the epitome of the cheap hate fucks that Ema was fond of because there was no lingering fondness.

Kyoko had red hands the likes of which Ema had never seen before and with them, she carved the worst and most painful rivulets she had ever felt on her back. That woman was a monster. All red hair and red hands and these cold, grey eyes which burned the same way that dry ice did. She was a rough fuck and Ema liked it. They weren’t the type to get cosy after coitus, but they would share a bed and somewhere in the exhaustion, they did become that type. It was an affectionate attachment that Ema thought that she wouldn’t ever be interested in. She wasn’t some hopeless romantic teenager, after all. Love them and leave them was her philosophy.

But she couldn’t leave Kyoko. Maybe not now but not never, Ema thought as she put kind emotions into herself when Kyoko stirred on the third one night stand that they had together. Ain’t it funny how things happen in threes?

Outside the room, it was thundering atrociously. That must’ve been what had woken Kyoko up; Ema had been drowsing, mostly thinking about how she was going to ghost Kyoko later but when she felt the other woman roll over and touch her back, so gently that Ema flinched because she wasn’t used to that woman’s touch being soft. And her voice, it broke as she spoke in a terrified whisper.

“I’m scared.”

Boom. Crash. Bright lights split the sky and rain of biblical proportions continues to last the sky roof of Ema’s penthouse apartment. Thunder and lightning followed and Ema didn’t need eyes in the back of her head to know how badly Kyoko winced. Her fingers curled in on themselves against Ema’s back. It was pitiful and she wanted to sigh but instead, she found herself with more compassion than that but maybe she shouldn’t be if her hunch was right.

Nonetheless, Ema rolled over and she didn’t realise how close Kyoko had been to her until now. They hadn’t been touching but they had been so close to it. A breadth of a breath; of a hair.

“Are you okay?” Ema asked. She was afraid to reach out across those mere millimetres between herself and Kyoko; a shame given her natural instinct was to console, to touch and caress her.

“Nights like these always take me back.” Kyoko confessed.

Ema swallowed her tongue on that. Sharp and cocky. She had been right.

“It was just after Dr Kogami had been…” Kyoko’s voice trailed off and as though on cue, there was another crash of lightning which she shuddered out. Her breathing turned ragged and she grimaced; huddling in on herself, giving herself the comfort that Ema was still, albeit hesitantly, withholding from her. “It was a night like this when Spectre came home with Ryoken; seeing his face was like divine retribution. Obviously we couldn’t get rid of him but it never stopped hurting completely. Only a little less; a constant reminder of what we had done to those children.”

It seemed even monsters could show remorse. Ema’s brows furrowed. It somehow seemed easier, on her conscious and even her heart, if she pigeonholed - believed - that the Knights of Hanoi were beyond redemption and that they were inhuman.

Of course, what does it say about her; that she was willing to cavort carnally with them…?

Regardless, in the darkness of her bedroom, Ema didn’t truly see an evil woman before her. She struggled to see anything; it was all in monochrome shades, a little grey, a little blue, some black and some white. Nothing definitive; all shadowy. She sighed and her escape breath was difficult to know the meaning of until she inched in closer.

Kyoko seemed surprised. Her eyes brightened briefly when she realised that she had finally been given the approval which she was vying towards but it was still more than apparent to Ema that she was consumed with guilt.

The thin sheets that they shared laid over her haphazard over Kyoko, barely disguising her nakedness; either of their nakednesses, really. Ema’s left hand snaked along Kyoko’s upper thigh, drawing circles upon it, moving the sheets, crumpling them and she gazed sympathetically unto her. She simply dripped with saccharine sympathy but it was mixed with disgust. Kyoko couldn’t blame her.

When Ema tried to understand this woman, to find some sense of purging divide between right and wrong. Kyoko was someone broken, maybe. Broken by decisions she had made when she was barely out of high school. Ergo, she had been taken advantage of, likely given some story about a shiningly bright future, all good and pristine and that the ends justified the means. No matter how repugnant such means were and whether the end was even worth it to begin with. After all, no Ignis were left and humanity had no successor...

It was sickening. But that never meant that she had to forgo agency. So, she was cruel in her denial of it. She was someone who had abided by six months of torture for six children, barely out of preschool. And someone who had been willing to abide by it for six more months, and possibly longer, if need be…

She was atoning, now, or so Ema had been told. Ema didn’t believe it but she still stroked the idea in case it was true. In her perspective, she saw cowardice in such claims, to be bluntly honest. If she wanted to atone, she ought to do it in the eyes of justice. Not in the shadows where it was safe.She should do something as stunning as lightning and electricity. But that was just Ema’s opinion and she had only been mauled by the data of the insane thrice. Exactly three times.

But as Ema came to embrace Kyoko, she found it difficult to maintain such heinous thoughts about her companion. Kyoko was complicated, there was no reducing that, Ema found as her thoughts and feelings fluctuated with each breath. Changing with the oxygen in her blood and lungs.

She hugged Kyoko tightly, in it all. Her body was cold and Ema snuggled in. Kyoko smiled with tears in her eyes as she laid her head on Ema’s breast. She could hear Ema’s heartbeat and she could feel it too. It was steady, not necessarily slow but it wasn’t fast either but it was sublimely comforting.

It still rained outside and violently at that. Kyoko still winced and flinched and was completely and utterly fragile as the lightning and thunder spooked her relentlessly but she did settle. She did come to dream, inhaling the smell of Ema’s sex and faded perfume as she did so. Finding some comfort in them both and in her warmth. Not once realising that Ema had cruel thoughts about her.

Even presently. Ema still couldn’t sleep and she was still considering ghosting Kyoko, leaving her out in the cold where the rain seemed to wash the world unclean in its natural violence. She probably deserved a bit more sadness in her chest like the turmoil of a storm, just like those kids and how it all spiralled out from there with those individuals. After all, she was still a monster; even when cradled in human arms but her eyes had lost that cement like bluster. There had been emotion, messy and unadulterated, in those eyes of Kyoko’s, right before they, with their sharp and pretty lashes, fluttered close and she fell asleep, calm and safe, in Ema’s arms.

The following morning came arduously and so did the day after that and Ema never ghosted Kyoko like she had planned to. She never told Kyoko about those thoughts as they lingered still. Turning to visions of futures which had the potential to come to pass but no, Ema kept them all to herself as sex turned to dating with the enigmatic Baira, sharp as medical waste syringes and as soft as the plastic bagging and as confusing as all the scientific names for all the chemicals inside little jars.

So, Ema stayed. They stayed. And somehow domesticity leaked into their relationship where it really shouldn’t have and Ema realised that her heart could come to pound when she enjoyed the familiarity that she had with Kyoko. The kisses which turned from sour to sweet, the longer that they stayed together and all the less than romantic moments in between which Ema prefered because she wasn’t that type of lady who could stomach all the sap and syrup more fitting to cinema than to her real life.

And it was all so strangely easy. As easy as breathing, to love Kyoko, Ema found. Even when she still felt that she shouldn’t because Kyoko’s hands were as red as her hair with the guilt of what she had done ten years ago and how it progressed since to hide the sins that yes, she was redeeming herself with. Or at least that’s what Ema had observed thus far alongside this woman she was in a relationship with.

Because despite it all, all the love that she had built up in her heart, Ema still had the occasional thought of leaving it all. Just like Kyoko was a monster, Ema was a ghost. It simply couldn’t be helped, even if there was a very real love, somehow at play in this situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lowkey inspired by Fleetwood Mac's _Dreams_


	18. Inspire

“Can you teach me to dance?”

“What would you like to learn?”

“Hm, something easy but romantic.”

The conversation kept playing over and over in Miho’s head. It was making her heart pound and her cheeks flush, no matter how many times she replayed that slice of exchange between them. She liked it though. It made her feel pleasantly airy and it seemed that Anzu enjoyed being in the lead, to show off her passions.

The request had been innocent, in Miho’s head at least. Easy peasy, really. But now that they were doing it, hand in hand, chest to chest, face to face, Miho felt all the more gawky and awkward. Anzu was doing her best to make things so, so easy but it was actually making things so, so much harder, to Miho at least.

It was no secret, except perhaps to herself that Miho was a bit klutzy. Hence why she wanted to try for something new; something elegant and graceful but such movements still felt wrong to her as Anzu tried to teach her the waltz.

A, one, and a two, and a three…

Over and over, Anzu chanted the instructions in pace with the instrumental music. Her words were chintzy against the background of the subtle, almost magical music which played from her, admittedly tinny, CD player. Still, it was nice. It grabbed Miho’s attention, every time she got lost in those gentle, almost silver melodies. 

Anzu spun her around and swirled her in time, stepping carefully and lightly where Miho trod with uncertainty. Still, Miho appreciated the guidance which Anzu continued to sweep her around with as they paced all over the dancefloor of Anzu’s bedroom, flitting by her bed, avoiding her dresser, so on and so forth. It was nice, even as the room grew a tad warmer with their slight exertion.

As they danced, Miho noticed that she held far too tightly onto Anzu’s hands which were so soft. Her own felt sweaty against them but every time she shyly glanced up to Anzu’s face from their feet, she would smile encouragingly; like she didn’t mind that Miho was a bad dancer - or at the very least, and more kindly put: an inexperienced dancer.

It was difficult to parse how much time had passed in the bedroom. The sun was beginning to set on the splendidly lazy, rather than splendidly studious, Sunday and the CD began to cough and spit, scratches on the CD which Anzu had well worn in her quest to perfect her own dancing so they stopped it there. Although, Miho’s heart didn’t stop.

She remained, standing in the centre of Anzu’s bedroom. Her toes scrunched into the shaggy rug underfoot and she put a hand on her breast in some vain effort to quell her quickly beating heart. All whilst she gazed off, somewhere towards the door with a nigh lovestruck gaze.

A gaze that Anzu, meanwhile, was ignorant to as she got down and scrambled about with the CD player, trying to beat some sense into it by smacking its top which was transparent but mostly pink. When the CD stopped skipping, it went back to the first track which ebbed through the quietness of her bedroom nicely. Anzu rose back up and with a delicate twirl, she faced Miho again although in brevity as she took a bow.

“Would you care for another lesson?” she asked.

Miho anxiously took Anzu’s hand and brought her in closer. Anzu, assuming that Miho did want to dance more, continued along with the intrepid moves but then Miho slotted in so close. Too close. And kissed her on the lips. With a sigh, Miho kissed Anzu on her peachy lips and was kissed back. Her heart was aflutter as she embraced the boldness of acting on this infatuation.

As Miho kissed Anzu, she realised that her feelings weren’t sudden. They weren’t induced by the closeness of holding hands and waltzing. They were, in fact, gradual. This was merely the reckoning of it. From elementary school onwards, Miho realised that she had never had crushes on the boys because she had always wanted to be by Anzu’s protective side and this was why.

When the music hit its crescendo, twinkling and almost moonlit sounding, the kiss broke off. Anzu sighed and she blinked. Miho, in that moment, agonised over how blissful it was to have her lips tingle with the echo of their rather chaste kiss, vaguely honeyed as Anzu only used beeswax chapstick. Miho would know as she often surprised her with tubes of it when she thought Anzu was getting low.

“I was… inspired by you…” Miho murmured. “It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

Anzu took her hand, “I agree. I think it was the right thing to do as well.” she mumbled and she leaned down to kiss Miho again as the music rose once more with violin strings which produced swelling sounds of gorgeousness, perfectly in tune with the breath that Miho took.


	19. Present

Mieru had known the girl since before she had become a starlet at all. Though, given the type of girl she was, that wasn’t really apt. She had always been a starlet, prancing and performing and vying for attention, but she hadn’t always been famous, but it had always been on her cards. In the glimmer of her insectile, blue eyes and in the bounce of her perfectly coiffed blonde hair. This was where she had always supposed to have been.

They were childhood friends of sorts. Kindred spirits. Both of them had eyes which were too big for their faces and they tended to stare at things which may not have been there. They had creeped all the other kids at their kindergarten out, so they were always each other’s safety buddies; hand in hand, matching buttercup yellow hats, and so on and so forth.

They went to different elementary schools and then different middle schools and despite remaining orbital to one another, their lives had taken in completely different directions. They had found that one talent of theirs which had truly set them apart from the rest of their pack. Mieru had taken to fortune-telling and awakening her psychic gifts. And Mikiyo had taken to singing, dancing, acting, performing. Whatever it was, she would be at the centre of it all, adored by all who watched her.

Including Mieru.

Little Mieru who could see just about everything despite her small stature.

The last few years had been lonely, Mieru found. At her school, she had always been her own shining star, in a way. The apex star of all her favourite constellations, she supposed for the musing metaphor. And in being that star, she was isolated because people only ever saw her reputation, not her. But Mieru didn’t mind. She liked being the teacher’s pet and later, Mikiyo would sing a similar song of loneliness.

She, too, had been isolated. Once the adults in her life saw the propensities for her own gifts, she had begun to flake in her own social spheres. People flocked to her, but they only saw her glamour. They weren’t interested in the Mikiyo beneath the Mikiyo.

For a short while, when they had gotten in touch again thanks to the Championships and all the chaos that had brought them and then some again when Zarc had been resurrected and when the dimensions collided and a new one, touch and go, had been ignited in their places. It had been hectic, to say the least, but at least their friendship could bud again. And bud some more when they realised, they were still the girl that the other needed.

That elusive bosom friend often spoke of fanciful literature.

And it was wonderful. Full of wonders and marvels.

It was just like when they were children. Hours upon hours’ worth of catching up which became philosophised reveries shared on their bedroom floors. Reaching out, timidly, across that space and time between them and holding hands again, making up new and old ideas about the universe and their places in them. As twin stars, so to speak. Green and blue. Pink and purple. Sparking, igniting, dying, living.

In it, Mieru thought that she had found it. Her own lover and they did kiss. They were each other’s first and it was secretive. In the moments leading up to it, candied words of interesting ideas about fate and destiny and fame made it seem like it would be right. It was soft, chaste, and it didn’t feel like it should have. It wasn’t of explosive fireworks and pounding hearts. It was more subtle than that and Mieru didn’t think that it should have been like that. She didn’t want it to be like that. It was selfish, but she thought that she deserved more. Something which aligned to her expectations. But she hung on. Just in case that whatever she was feeling - a passing whimsy? A crush? Love? - was supposed to feel like that.

Mieru wasn’t the only selfish one, she soon realised, as she spent yet more time with Mikiyo after that.

Mieru had considered it. Separating herself from Mikiyo. Just for a little bit so that she could sort her feelings out. Do some duelling and divination and just get away from her present self and try to capture the essence of her future self to see what wisdom that she could pass on backwards to what was about to be her past self. But it didn’t happen like that. After all, she did truly miss Mikiyo after being away from her for so long so they had become magnetised once more and Mieru could be lying if she said that she hadn’t spent hours previous to their reunion waxing poetic and pining after what could have been with her dear friend.

Mikiyo returned to Mieru’s life like a flurry and she was demanding all sorts of things from her. Astrological charts, tarot cards, runes and jewels and more. Mieru, always ecstatic to share her gifts, couldn’t deny Mikiyo but as they sat, knelt, really, on Mieru’s mat inside her esoteric bedroom, her own feelings clouded all the more whilst Mikiyo’s skies became ever clearer. She flipped over cards and analysed the way that her various tooled gems glinted, and she recounted to Mikiyo the meaning of them all whilst she pondered what Mikiyo’s meaning was.

Who was this girl who sat before her? Eating out of her word, holding onto each word as Mieru only had the kindest and most gorgeous things to say about her and they were all true. They were all going to be true because Mieru was that accurate in her psychics. But who was Mikiyo? Really?

Even Mieru was beginning to have doubts that she would ever know this girl. Where did her true self start and where did her saccharine acting begin? Mieru was uncertain and the more she tried to search for facts, the more she wondered if she had ever known this girl, truly, and if she had merely wanted what she wanted to see in her as well.

Someone the same as her. A kindred spirit.

But Mieru had hope. Or at least she thought that she did as she tossed a coin and yet more gold was destined unto Mikiyo, and Mieru had hope that she wasn’t just plated or foolish and that the feelings that she towards Mikiyo, whatever they were, no matter how nebulous meant something. Something grand. Something which would one day be unveiled to her, through the misty curtains of time, and become something tangible. Something as real as multiple worlds and monsters which could breathe, had heartbeats, perhaps.


	20. Dread

Aoi wept at Miyu’s bedside. What had begun as a beautiful hug, blossoming with blue petals and all the hopes of ten years come true, soon turned to something else and it was unfair.

If anyone ought to be crying, it should be Miyu, but she would never voice such selfishness, especially not in the presence of her dear, angelic saviour but it was true. As Aoi wept, hands crumpling next to Miyu, into the sheets, Miyu slowly unbottled years’ worth of hopes and dreams, all intertwined with her trauma, but instead, she was strong because Aoi, her Aoi, had returned to her somehow. But once again, Miyu had to be strong for Aoi because that’s all she could ever been when it was difficult. Stupidly resilient.

Tears streamed down her face before Miyu could even blink, let alone think as to why her best friend in the whole wide world would suddenly breakdown at her bedside like that. Arms splayed over Miyu’s legs, rugged up in pristine white sheets and her hand awkwardly guiding itself to the crown of Aoi’s head. She tentatively stroked her friend’s head, concern dripping off her face as she tried to understand why Aoi was sobbing as she was.

Her hair was soft, Miyu noticed as she tried to calm Aoi as best as she could. Despite a storm of her own anxiety beginning to brew in her own chest. The moment felt drawn out, painfully so but eventually, Aoi lifted her head off the edge of Miyu’s bed and she took a breath. Her orangey-brown eyes were stained red with her tears. Her cheeks were salty and sullen, her chin pruned with her terrible grief.

“I’m sorry.” Aoi murmured.

“If anyone should be sorry, it should be me.” Miyu said. Her voice began to warble, crack, and tears of her own lingered in her steely blue eyes; if only she could be as strong as that colour and all it symbolised. “I’m so sorry, Aoi... I-If only I had been truthful that day then maybe... then maybe none of this didn’t happen, oh, Aoi, you have no idea what happened after you–”

“I do.” Aoi derisively cut Miyu off before she flinched.

Miyu’s heart stopped. “You do?” she stuttered out.

“I mean. I don’t. I’ve only been told things, shown things in brief... I know about the Incident, Miyu, and I’m so sorry.” Aoi began to blubber. “You were just a child. You didn’t deserve that and I’m so sorry.”

Miyu’s stomach knotted; her palms sweated, and she couldn’t help herself. She was crying too. Now completely bawling her eyes out, whining and high just like a tumultuous child but she had to let it all out. It felt so good to finally have that catharsis that she wanted: Aoi’s sweet words and all that pertained to, but it felt so bad to no longer have that crutch. Aoi stilled herself, on her knees as though she were praying, and she held onto Miyu as best as she could. Arms sliding over her legs, hugging her waist as Miyu keeled overall.

All whilst grimly thinking to herself that there was worse news to come. Aoi took a breath once Miyu had quietened somewhat but she had balled up in on herself; cutting Aoi off as Miyu wanted to be hugged herself and only herself. She nearly hid her face in her knees, playing with her long auburn hair, grimacing as she did so.

“I know why you were taken, Miyu. May I tell you?” Aoi asked. “It’s just. There’s something important I want to tell you, but I’m worried it’s going to hurt you.”

Miyu was shaken by the statement. Her hands began to twitch as her heart hollowly beat in her chest. She tried to self soothe but putting her balled fist to her chest, but it wasn’t working but it did bring this strange feeling to herself. That calm that she was after, so gentle and blue. Why did she feel that it was in danger?

“Aoi, I trust you to tell me this.” Miyu finally decided to reply amid her dread and trepidation.

“The Lost Incident, known as the Hanoi Project, was designed to create beings known as the Ignis. Artificial Intelligences with free will. Your duelling, Miyu, created the Ignis called Aqua, the Water Ignis and she – and she... she was very kind. And gentle. Caring. But – But she’s gone now. She didn’t come back. The final fight, in the Link VRAINS, killed her. I’m so sorry.”

Miyu’s throat tightened. The echoes of her screaming remained in it, raw and hoarse. When she awoke, she had awoken freshly but, in the hour, before, she had been screaming and thrashing, doctors holding her down, begging for the sedatives they had given her to kick in, she had been resisting them all until she simply gave out as though by her own will or volition. Or, darkly, as though something had been extinguished in her.

“I felt her.” Miyu confessed softly. “I think... I felt it when she died.”

“I’m so sorry, Miyu.” Aoi said. She grimaced, thinking of how Spectre had so elusively implied that he had felt just as hurt when Earth had been decompiled at Queen’s cruel hands during his duel with Lightning.

“I wish... I could have met her.” Miyu mourned and she slowly unfolded herself. She reached out to Aoi and caressed her wet, but silky, face.

“She loved you very much and she watched you from afar.” Aoi told her. “She was proud of your accomplishments at school and that you had grown into a fine young woman despite your pain.”

“Thank you, Aoi.” Miyu murmured with a grieving smile.

“She visited you once. She tried to wake you up from the coma that one of the other Ignis had put you in. When she couldn’t, you gave her the inspiration she needed to seek me out. I’m thankful to her, Aqua, for reuniting us. I’m sorry it couldn’t have happened sooner or under less dire circumstances.” Aoi said. 

Miyu was uncomfortably quiet upon hearing that. She grimaced, continued to hold her fist against her breast and she was right. That little hunch that she had had. It was right. That little blue feeling, so calm and pleasant, it had been real. That little blue fairy she had seen in her mind’s eye that time so long ago.

“I’m sorry.” Aoi said again and she felt bad saying it.

Miyu felt worse hearing it. That’s all people ever were. Sorry. She didn’t want to hold it against Aoi, but she was sick of hearing it. That’s why she never told anyone about her past. She wasn’t a very truthful or transparent girl, unfortunately. Not after anything that had happened, anyway.

“I have something for you.” Aoi piped up. “Something to remember Aqua by.”

Aoi reached around to her bag. She pulled it closer to her and she pulled out a little velvet bag. Miyu blinked, curious but concerned, as she watched Aoi open it up by pulling on its navy-blue drawstrings. Again, she was right. That small packaging could only mean one thing.

Cards.

Duel Monster cards.

Miyu swallowed thickly as Aoi showed her such precious cargo.

“They’re called Marincess cards.” Aoi said. “They belonged to Aqua, as her personal archetype with the Cyberse type; a type made only by the Ignis. I think Aqua would want you to have them. I want you to have them.”

Miyu… didn’t want them. But she didn’t want to tell Aoi that so she carefully touched them. Regarding them as though they had the ability to cut her. Wound her deeply. But instead, they were harmless. Clean and crisp with a cool touch to them which she couldn’t really explain to herself as she skirted her fingers along the different cards depicting all sorts of cute and beautiful girls from beneath the deep blue seas.

“I think you should keep them, Aoi, you never know, you might need them again soon.” Miyu brightly told her, keeping tears and lies at bay. “You knew her. Can remember her. They would be wasted on me, I think.”

“...Very well then, if that’s what you want.” Aoi replied, reluctantly accepting Miyu’s answer.

“Thank you, Aoi. That means a lot to me.” Miyu said. “All I’ve wanted for the pass ten years is an opportunity to see you again. Thank you, even if the occasion is terribly sad. You’ll keep visiting, right? That would mean more to me.”

“Of course, Miyu.” Aoi empathetically replied.

Her voice rang so preciously through Miyu. She beamed beautifully, strongly, and hugged her very special friend. Tight and meaningfully. 


	21. Noise

Rin was always humming to herself. She wasn’t sure when the habit started but she was sure that she could think better when her mouth was echoing with the vibrations of her humming. It made her feel like she had another friend hanging over her shoulders, helping to guide her hands and to correct things that she didn’t tend to notice firsthand without it.

But it was weird. Rin wasn’t exactly the most musical person. Yugo would always tease her about her two left feet; not that he could talk but he still liked the buzz of Ron’s humming whenever she was in the thrall of her thinking and it was never singing only ever humming. Any louder or with lyrics and she couldn’t even carry a tune but somehow, humming felt good and right to her. It tended to be a different song every time, but they were always nice. Classical. Certainly not something which Rin would pick up by the by, in the garages of older teens they would hang out with sometimes or even from the orphanage’s matron as she wasn’t that attentive of a woman to sing lullabies to her wards.

As such Rin didn’t know where the songs that she hummed came from. She would like to claim that she just made them up on the spot. Anyone with half an ear could tell that the songs which she hummed along to were too polished to have simply been made up on the fly and with barely half a brain focusing on the process.

So, it begged the question: where did Rin’s songs come from?

She sometimes tried to listen to the radio to puzzle it together, with screws in her mouth and a wrench in her hand, trying to straighten up Yugo’s dowdy handiwork on their bike. But it just didn’t sound right in her head. It made her more frustrated so they ended up having to scout a new radio later that day since she just couldn’t handle their dumb songs and all their advertisement and the haughty Tops laughter and whatnot which came off the radio’s waves. It was all worthless noise to her compared to the songs in her head, which were bright and varied and made her feel so good so deep in her heart.

Rin still searched for answers about the mysterious songs that she heard in her head, even when she had been thrown into the nicest prison conceivable in a whole different dimension. Admittedly, those songs that she hummed along to helped keep her sane. In this strange place, a bedroom in a tower for a girl whom she wasn’t, her only options for companionship were either solitude or the people who would threaten her, to make her bend and break so those songs in her head, they made for a wonderful reprieve. They were truly like another person with her, keeping her grounded and consoled as she tried to scheme her wait out of this cage fruitlessly.

It was a shame that the revelation regarding the identity of who the songstress in her mind had to come so late and so independent of who it was.

The origin of all those songs in her head was Yuzu.

A girl just like her. From another dimension. With a bracelet similar to the one around her own wrist. The girl whom Rin was sentenced to an eternity with. Her prison was Yuzu’s body. It was unfair and though Rin was thrilled to piece together the answer to the mystery which had haunted her for so much of her youth, it was a shame that the catharsis was at such a price.

Though Yuzu didn’t know why she and Rin were specifically connected as such, from different dimensions and a trait unique to them and only them, she did understand Rin’s feelings on the topic. She had always felt that similar connection to Rin; when music played, she felt as though she had some unseen and invisible friend with her, all to herself, even when she practiced alone and badly at that. Yuzu had relished that alien sense of companionship as well.

She was glad that she had been some consistent consoling force in Rin’s life, even if it was embarrassing to have all her music praised as beautiful and divine and angelic because those were the sorts of words associated with the Tops music that Rin likened Yuzu’s songs to. Though, Rin couldn’t flatter Yuzu enough in her opinion because she meant every word of it.


	22. Eyes

Asuka brushed Rei’s hair with a soft bristled brush. She still flinched and winced for her, no matter how gentle. A sigh was elicited from Asuka’s mouth and Rei was quick to bemoan it.

“I don’t mean to.” She told Asuka. “I’m just not used to having someone who’s not me brush my hair.”

“I can tell.” Asuka said. “And that’s why someone needs to do it, it’s such a lovely length, Rei, but you don’t take care of it.”

Rei was quiet. She knew that Asuka wasn’t being mean spirited with such an admonishment, but it still hurt her, like a papercut, regardless. Asuka continued to stroke Rei’s hair, slower this time in some vain hope that it might quell all the nervous energy which Rei seemed to bristle with, but it seemed futile.

“Your quite tomboyish, Rei, do you have any siblings? Brothers?” Asuka asked and she used a tone which Rei thought was supposed to be relatable.

It wasn’t. She wanted to shake her head but she didn’t want to make things more difficult for Asuka so she found her voice, even if there was a lump in her throat.

“No. I’m an only child.” Rei told her.

“That makes sense.” Asuka murmured. “What about parents? Did your mother ever brush your hair?”

“When I was really little. She passed away when I was about six... I miss her a little bit, you know? But I don’t really remember her.” Rei whispered, and some more thoughts went unsaid but not unthought; thoughts about how she kind of smelt just like you...

Asuka stopped brushing Rei’s hair. “I shouldn’t have pried.” She said, regretful. “Would you like me to stop?”

“No. I want to look nice.” Rei said. “You always look so nice, Asuka. I want to look nice like you too.”

“Thank you, Rei, that’s rather sweet.” Asuka replied. She continued to brush Rei’s hair.

They were both quiet for a moment. In the silence of what had once been their conversation, Rei could hear the birds outside and the wind. She could hear the hustle and bustle of people in the Blue Dorm. It was really nice here. Opulent, she supposed. Way different to her digs in the Red Dorm and different again from back home where it was just her and her old man. To be honest, the Red Dorm was a huge step up from it, hence why she was so excited to get away from home, but she wasn’t sure if she could tell Asuka that yet. She didn’t want to concern her. Asuka was kind like that...

Asuka noticed that Rei had calmed down somewhat. She sat still in Asuka’s lap, on the floor, her back against her double bed because somehow being down on the floor just felt more natural. Her bed suddenly felt scary with someone else on it, even if it was another girl; younger than her, at that. It somehow felt inappropriate but Asuka didn’t know why and for once, she didn’t want to investigate those feelings and how they felt like an infestation under her skin so she focused on her task at hand: brushing Rei’s hair.

Rei was really cute, Asuka thought to herself. Prickly and vivacious. She had a lot of promise as a Duellist. And now that she had settled down, that raw beauty which she had, misshapen in the way that adolescents were. Now, with her hair all straightened out, the knots brushed out, perhaps more of that cute beauty that Rei had could shine just like her hair. It was surprisingly silky when it wasn’t all fluffy with bedhead.

“Which side of your head do you normally part your hair?” Asuka said. “I have some ribbons and things, if you’d like to try out a new style, as well?”

“The right side.” Rei told her.

“Too easy.” Asuka smiled.

“Do you think I’d look cute with short hair?” Rei asked, nigh all of a sudden.

Asuka hummed. “I think so. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.” Rei shrugged. “I like the aesthetic of long hair but clearly I’m not good at keeping it all nice so maybe I should chop it all off?”

Asuka tumbled up Rei’s hair and then let it sag so that it simulated what a short haired Rei might look like. She hummed.

“I think you would look good with anything Rei.” Asuka said and she trainsitioned into plaiting Rei’s hair.

Rei giggled. “You’re too sweet, Asuka.”

Asuka tidied up Rei’s hair as she plaited it. Her hair was thick but rather lovely. She looked good with the plait, when she finished up. It was a shame that she didn’t have any fun accessorised hairbands, Asuka mused as Rei had fun swinging her plait side to side like a pendulum over her back. One of those simple ones, Asuka thought, with the baubles would look good since Rei was currently running an Egg Deck – Asuka thought that Rei’s Maiden In Love deck suited her better if they were going to talk aesthetics of things.

Rei twisted around in Asuka’s lap, tentatively putting her hand on Asuka’s upper thigh. Rei had this big grin on her face, her eyes all sparkly with gratitude and something else which allured Asuka more than it should have. Likely because it was something mischievous and she could be rather weak when it came to nonsense.

“Can I ask you something, Asuka?” Rei asked.

“Sure, go ahead.” Asuka blithely replied.

“Do you see me as a little sister?” Rei asked.

Asuka hummed in thought, “Not sure.”

“Good.” Rei replied and before Asuka could blink, she leaned in and stole a kiss.

Asuka blushed and she didn’t allow herself to kiss back. She didn’t particularly want to but she wasn’t exactly cursing this kiss either. It was decent. Clearly the work of the inexperienced, not that Asuka could talk. She hadn’t had very many crushes in her life; this girl kissing her had more whimsical luck in that department but similarly, none of them had gotten very far.

Rei pulled back. “It’s good because I think I like you. I just don’t know how.”

“...Good to know.” Asuka replied on a thin, guarded breath.

Rei smiled cherubically with a chuckle on her lips upon hearing that.

Yes, Asuka could be weak for mischief sometimes.


	23. Beast

Serena casually scratched behind her head, “So, um, that’s the gist of it, I want to go out with you, pipsqueak. Do you want to go out with me? I want to be your girlfriend.”

To say that Mieru short circuited in response to Serena’s confession would be the understatement of the century. As an Aries in Venus, Mieru was completely and totally unprepared for this scenario as she was the one used to do the chasing for kisses and more. She certainly wasn’t used to such a grungy confession either. Where were the dramatics? The theatrics? Did this girl have no sense of style or grandeur?

Looking at her crummy red jacket and the way she couldn’t even use suitable, fanciful language for the confession, apparently. Mieru was appealed. Completely and utterly appalled from the tips of her toes to the crown of her head. This was beastly. This was humiliating and this was coming from the girl whose first encounter with her so-called fated one included him accidentally sneaking a peak of her pantaloons in front of hundreds!

This was awful… Mieru didn’t know what to say or think. Her morning horoscope said that her luck was fair, neither good nor bad, and that it would be a humdrum affair of her day. A horoscope further supported by the reading her cards had given her for posterity. This sort of surprise was not in the vicinity of humdrum as a self admitted hopeless romantic. But, she did suppose this terribly flat delivery of important feelings could be flexibly interpreted as, well, humdrum. Completely normal. Not entirely out of the blue. Just completely subpar for someone like Mieru who was more red than blue making her purple.

“Are you okay, Mieru?” Serena started, somewhat concerned. 

“Just. Thinking.” Mieru said through her gritted teeth, now completely worried about just how she looked in the middle of this ruckus which was barely raucous. Her cheeks were certainly beginning to tinge with pain from holding such a pained smile.

Serena sighed. “I was told I should be worried about this happening. But I shrugged it off.”

“Well, after a moment of deliberation, I have come to a decision.” Mieru abruptly announced in the middle of what seemed to be Serena commiserating. 

Serena perked you heading that. “Seriously?” she asked, shoulders lifting expectantly whilst her eyes widened.

“Seriously.” Mieru affirmed and seemed to magically produce her crystal apple she frequently divined from. She let the light bounce off it’s curves for a moment. “I find you dowdy, Serena. This confession was all wrong in choreography and in astrology but…”

“But…?” Serena prompted Mieru, not at all miffed at what Mieru certainly considered to be a scathing admonishment of all the errors of romance that Serena ought to be indicted for.

“But perhaps if you spend more time with me, you might learn a thing or two about poise and how to align your goals with every almanac and star there is. So today must be your lucky day, I might not be looking for a girlfriend, specifically, at this very moment but there is something I’m looking for…” Mieru’s rambles came to an adorably quiet linger. Her face was heating up, blushed finely now with a scant pink. “I’m looking for a familiar, if you don’t mind and I’m sure a girl like you, imbued with cats and the moon and butterflies too, would be a perfect match for someone like me.” The gleam of her green eyes were palatable in this moment, entrancing Serena. “Oh, and we can still go on dates, does the observatory sound fun?”

Serena beamed widely at Mieru. “I’ve never been to an observatory before. That sounds like heaps of fun.” she replied.

“Marvellous.” Mieru replied. 

She, too, beheld a great grin now upon confirming such a thing. Thus, awkwardly, Mieru came closer and on her tiptoes. She kept one hand, her crystal apple aptly clutched in it, by her chest whilst her other extended forth towards the top of Serena’s head. She was aptly confused by the gesture until Mieru started to pat her fringe. Serena smiled fondly, dumbly. Her hair felt like straw to Mieru and her hand felt cold to Serena. But they both had a mutual appreciation for the other, after this strange confession and even stranger acceptance of it. 

But at the bottom line, with all the cards dealt and with the stars hidden away, Serena had a feeling that she was going to be a great familiar to Mieru; a girlfriend in all but name alone.


	24. Fruit

Aoi was awed by the orchards that she passed by as Kiku led her to her homestead. Unlike Takeru who lived on the edge of town, Kiku lived way out into the true sticks of it on her family’s farm.

The town was already so sparse but further out, things seemed so much wider and sparser. It was something of a culture shock, for Aoi, to see so much nothing on the way to Kiku’s place as she was used to bright neon lights and buildings crammed onto every corner and people bustling about in huge crowds but she appreciated it for what it was. Even if it seemed lonesome in its emptiness. It was strangely gorgeous all the same as the sights that Aoi, a true city girl through and through, was used to. She liked the long grass, the wildflowers, clusters of mowing dairy cows on fence lines.

It was all marvellous to Aoi whereas it was mundane to Kiku. She didn’t mind though, she found Aoi’s childlike wonder of the countryside to be endearing. After all, she too, could see the beauty in what was well normalised to her.

They wandered through the house, first. It was much cooler indoors than outside as the summer heat was unrelenting. It was a very nice house, Aoi felt, in that it felt lived in. Passed on. Kiku told her about how it had been in the family for generations upon generations, built by hand and whatnot. That continuity charmed Aoi as she, more or less inadvertently, snooped along the bookcases and shelves, looking at family photographs and other knickknacks.

The two of them wound up at the back veranda though; Kiku’s bedroom adjoined on the other side, transparent curtains fluttering in the warm breeze which passed through the open windows and over the russet roofing. The backyard overlooked yet more paddocks upon paddocks of produce, though this more recreational area was framed by some fencing. Here, the grass was trimmed and there was a decorative garden, framing the veranda, just beneath them and also woven throughout the backyard, complete with an outdoor eating area and a place for the family dog to live, as well.

Though, hidden in the decorative garden, with spiralling steppingstones sunken into the ground underfoot, Kiku showed Aoi her personal vegetable patch. It was almost like a fairy garden compared to the more robust orchards and things on the cusp of the backyard.

“It might seem a little redundant, but I really wanted my own paddock to manage as a child, but my parents couldn’t give me one, so they let me have this.” Kiku explained, hovering over Aoi’s shoulder as she was on her knees, looking at the strawberries and carrots and other things which Kiku grew with little, almost kitschy decorations planted in the soil too.

“I think its cute.” Aoi murmured, eyes shining.

Kiku got down. “Would you like to sample some?” she asked, brushing her plait off her shoulder.

“I’d love to, if you don’t mind.” Aoi replied.

“Not at all, you can help if you like.” Kiku said. “Look for the strawberries which are mostly red, and don’t worry too much about being too gentle. They’re tougher than they look.”

“Thank you.”

Together, they plucked and pulled a few samples of fruit from Kiku’s tiny garden. It was more fun than Aoi thought it would be but she kept getting distracted; stealing glances At Kiku and marvelling at how natural she looked, tending to her garden like this. There was a slight look of determination across her brow, arching her lips as she decided which of her produce was ready and which weren’t.

They came back with a good-sized haul for what a little cache of goodies that Kiku’s garden consisted of. They sat on the veranda, their feet overhanging and getting lost amongst Kiku’s mother’s flowers and the like.

“Here go ahead, try some.” Kiku told Aoi; insisted, almost pushily, really. She pinched a strawberry by what remained of its stem, lifting it up to Aoi.

Aoi didn’t mind, she smiled, “Alright.”

She opened her mouth, closed her eyes, and let Kiku feed her. Her teeth sank through the strawberry. She laughed, half choked on it, and tried to eat it. Kiku laughed too, this was more difficult to do than she envisioned but at least Aoi was having a good time.

And she was. She really was. The strawberry was sweet; juicy. She could very happily munch throw a lot more of these strawberries – and that was a good thing, their haul had been quite bountiful. It had really set the standard for what the others ought to taste like; going further still, Aoi couldn’t wait for dinner so she could sample some other vegetables straight from the Kamishirakawa farmstead.

“That was really delicious, Kiku.” Aoi told Kiku, opening her eyes and being almost instantly dizzied by just how bright the afternoon sun was as it came overhead, creeping in and under the veranda’s roof, getting in amongst the shadows with the girls.

“I’m glad to hear it- oh, you’ve got something...”

Kiku’s train of thought was quickly lost as she had blithely replied to Aoi. She thumbed Aoi’s chin, rubbing at the remnants of the strawberry and her heart pounded.

“Can I give you something else sweet?” Kiku asked.

“Please, go ahead.” Aoi murmured.

Slowly, Kiku pressed a kiss onto Aoi’s lips. They were stained with the strawberry she had eaten but were made tender as Kiku kissed her. Almost thoroughly as she grew daring as they got comfortable with each other. Aoi sighed and Kiku kissed her deeply. Kiku had a natural taste to her, Aoi thought; the taste of her beeswax lip balm, locally sourced, and the warmth of summer around them.

Kiku broke off the kiss and smiled sheepishly, she murmured: “That was nice.” Her hand stayed close to her, toying with the leaves and stems of the other strawberries in the pile that she kept close. She picked one out and that prior sheepishness of her smile gave way to something else, something like pride. “Would you like a few more strawberries?” she asked.

Aoi nodded demurely. Looking forward to their taste and maybe more tastes of Kiku’s kisses in between, if she was lucky and she was certainly feeling fortunate today whilst the family dog barked, suddenly, in the distance, likely at some fleeting and curious rabbit or something.


	25. Lock

Cathy growled a catlike growl to herself. Her fingers were beginning to ache from trying to get the fiddly bits of her newest piece of jewellery right. Honestly, she should have waited a little bit longer, until she got home but she was so excited that the choker that she had been eyeing from a high-end jewellery shop that she loved, but could never afford, had finally gone on sale. Out of season, the lady said. Pfft, something as classic looking as this would never go out of season, it was totally and utterly timeless.

And beautiful too. A velvet band of black, leathery on the inside but fuzzy on the inside with a lock of ornate silver. It was perfect. The detailing had a motif of twitching tendrils which Cathy chose to perceive as whiskers, like the adorably twitching whiskers of a kitten, as it wasn’t overly flowery or otherwise floral. Then there were also the spikes either side of the arc of the lock’s top, they could easily be mistaken for cat ears, what perfect triangles. Not to mention, it was so comfortable to wear. She had been terrified that it would feel itchy or otherwise bad on her neck, her skin was so sensitive, but instead, it had been wondrous and sublime. A pure sensory heaven.

But as luck would have it, the moment that Cathy wanted to wear it outside of the stiflingly gorgeous jewellery shop, she was having trouble with the clasp. Also, the lock kept hitting her larynx since she had yet to properly secure it. So, to get used to doing it up, she was trying to learn to do the clasp whilst looking at it.

Though, looking at it was a supreme understatement. No, Cathy was glaring at it with murderous intent as she tried to get the doohickie to open up and latch onto the whatchamacallit. It was so tiny and silvery, and she already had bad eyesight to begin with which was exacerbating all the millions of problems she was having to learn how to intuitively attach the clasps so that she could do it without looking in a moment.

“Aw, darn.” Cathy muttered to herself as she failed once again and stupendously at that. “Fiddlesticks...”

She dropped her choker on the ground and she grumbled to herself. Now it was going to be all dirty. She furtively glanced around. Of all the days to forgo her contacts, she had to pick today? She sighed and popped down off the bench that she was becoming quite comfy sitting on.

She reached for her choker and a second hand got to it first. She lifted herself up and saw Kotori kindly smiling down on her.

“Can I help you?” Kotori asked.

Cathy huffed as she sat down on the bench again. Kotori still smiled sweetly as she handed over the choker, but not before dusting it off first. Not that it had gotten much muck on it, fortunately, in the first place.

“I’m right.” Cathy said.

“Are you sure? I saw you struggling earlier...” Kotori murmured, she shifted awkwardly as she held onto various shopping bags that she had, most were pink with rose gold accents.

Cathy squeaked in surprise and went red. She pouted and in a small voice, admitted to Kotori: “Yes, I would like some help then.”

“Too easy.” Kotori chirruped, pleased that she had convinced her friend to let her help her.

Kotori whipped around to behind Cathy. She seemed awfully cheery all of a sudden and Cathy suddenly felt nervous with this other girl behind her. Kotori gently pushed her hair out of the way and Cathy wondered what Kotori thought about it... Did she find it soft? Greasy? Something else entirely?

Kotori hummed to herself as she sized up Cathy’s neck, “Is this good?” she asked.

“Yes, actually.” Cathy was surprised to say as Kotori got her preferred placement right on the first go.

“Then too easy...” Kotori said as she nimbly did up the clasp. “And, voila! All locked up now, kitten.”

“Thank you.” Cathy murmured, warbled really, going pink.

Kotori blinked. “You okay?”

“Purrfectly fine.” Cathy lied, still blushing.

Her heart raced, and she touched the lock on her neck, fingers brushing over all the intricate engravements. She couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if she was wearing a proper collar...

Cathy stiffened upon letting such musings come to the forefront of her mind. She immediately scolded herself for having such scandalous and salacious thoughts. Especially about Kotori.

“Whatever you say then, happy to have been of service.” Kotori said, blithe and smiley. “See you at school?”

“Y-Yes.” Cathy stammered out to Kotori who was none the wiser to why Cathy was going pink.


	26. Clouds

Another day, another dud date.

Hayami had really thought that Akira would come this time. It was supposed to be totally casual. Totally platonic. And he had been totally up for it until Hayami got a sudden text from him. Something had come up, something involving Aoi and being a woman who aspired to have a nice, cookie-cutter family, she couldn’t make Akira come on this totally not a date date because it was a family issue.

But knowing that she was being selfless, didn’t make Hayami feel much better. She stood out, in the rain no less, just adjacent to her favourite ramen and udon restaurant, poking the bowl of salt on the ground with her foot, listening to the sizzle of gyoza from inside. She sighed to herself. Another lost opportunity. And it made Hayami realise.

She was never going to be anywhere close to Akira’s top priority. They were barely friends and very likely, they were just going to remain co-workers forever. Hayami very much wanted to shrug such thoughts off but it was finally time to face the writing on the wall. He just wasn’t that into her.

A sigh escaped her lips and not a moment sooner, someone suddenly showed up in her life to turn that frown upside down.

A motorcycle screeched and Hayami was drenched in muddy city water as it pulled up in front of her. A gorgeous woman sat, strident, over the machine and as she haphazardly tore her helmet off, her mane of long, fluffy hair fell back and in a panicked way that only the coolest of the cool could be, she asked: “Are you okay?” A jostled exclamation which rung out across the cold rain.

Hayami laughed, shrugged her shoulders. “It’s not nearly as bad as how I feel.”

“Aw, sweetums, what’s the matter, Risa?” she asked.

“Huh?” Hayami blinked. “How do you know my name... hang on, wait a minute. You! You’re the girl from that thing! You know Akira! Uh, c’mon... your name’s on the tip of my tongue... wait, got it! Ema! You’re... Bessho Ema.”

“Right on the target.” Ema replied with a playful wink. She dismounted from her motorcycle.

“My apologies for forgetting your name...” Hayami murmured.

“None taken. Though, personally, I never forget a cute girl’s name.” Ema said and she quickly came in under the restaurant’s crimson pergola.

Together, they stood side by side, just out of the rain, it splashed out noisily towards their feet. The bowl of salt was all that separated them. Hayami fidgeted with her hands whereas Ema kept stealing curious glances towards her.

They had only met briefly, and it was quite a while ago now. At least sixteen months ago, now but Ema didn’t know Hayami to be so dour. She looked weirdly defeated. Her shoulders all slack and sloping. Her cheery face wiped of all that tenacious mirth. Even her wavy hair had lost so much of its curly shine. And Ema suspected that it wasn’t just because her and her cute little pantsuit were all drenched with muddy rainwater.

“What’s the matter, hon? Life got you down? Cat got your tongue?” she asked quietly beneath the sound of the pelting rain.

“Yeah, something like that...” Hayami murmured.

“There’s a restaurant behind us,” Ema pointed out, “wanna go inside and talk about it?”

“Maybe. This place is my favourite but... I don’t know if I’m in the mood anymore.” Hayami said.

“That’s just tragic.” Ema sighed, folding her arms. “We’re absolutely going in if it’s your favourite.”

Without even giving her a chance to reply, Ema reached out and grabbed Hayami’s hand. She dragged her inside and to the barman, she yelled: “Sitting for two, please, sir!”

He gestured the seats in front of him and the barman barked at someone on his staff. A waitress came over and gave the two ladies some glasses of water, and a nice fresh towel for Hayami to dab over herself. Sitting down, in the thick of all the savoury scents, finally returned a smile to Hayami’s face, even if it was feeble. Ema noticed and was a delighted.

“Excuse me, sir, I’ll take a pork bowl please. Make it extra spicy, thanks. And I’ll pay tonight, so whatever she orders is on my bill. It’s our date now.” Ema teased, throwing another wink towards Hayami but Hayami groaned. “Oh, sweetie, did you get stood up?” Ema looked as though she had regretted her choice of gab.

“Kinda.” Hayami said. “It wasn’t really a date, but I was meeting the guy I liked.”

“Akira?” Ema guessed.

Hayami nodded quietly.

“Thought so. I know that feeling. I chased him for a bit as well but just between you and me, I don’t think he goes for gals like us. Or gals in general.” Ema whispered.

“Oh...” Hayami murmured, eyes widening, and she started to laugh. “Oh, uh, good for him. Oh gosh. Well...”

“Yeah.” Ema replied, something of a chuckle in her voice as well. “So, what can I order for you?”

Hayami smiled, wider this time, and she flicked a few tears from the corner of her eyes. Or maybe they were raindrops. Who’s to say?

She licked her lips, “If you don’t mind, Ema, can I call you Ema?”

“Yeah, absolutely.”

“I’d like chikara udon... I like my mochi. It reminds me of home.” Hayami shyly said.

Ema tapped the top of the divider. “Hear that old man, my date here, so cute and wonderful, would like a chikara udon, please.”

Hayami blushed and now she was the one stealing glances at Ema. She was beautiful. She had derisive eyes, long lashes, a curvaceous body. She was way out of Hayami’s league, she felt but goodness gracious, it felt so good to be called _her_ date. Hayami could only imagine what it could be like to be called _her_ girlfriend. Or _her_ wife. But that was probably getting way too ahead of herself, but it was just like her to infatuate like this. As quickly as a downpour, that’s what Hayami’s feelings were like.

Ema smirked when she caught Hayami staring. “So, Risa, why don’t you tell me more about yourself? You said mochi reminds you of home? What’s the story there, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Hayami replied, growing hungrier by the second because the restaurant smelt so good, and so did Ema, truth be told, all coy perfume downtrodden by the rain and by a bit of gasoline as well, “well, I was born on March third, Hinamatsuri and...”

She went on to explain the associated memories with her family and childhood. After wallowing in such misery prior, the way Hayami’s face lit up was absolutely precious. Ema listened, sweetly, not quite intently as such pleasantries were vaguely alien to her because of the trouble her birth had caused her family, in a way, but it was nice. Her eyes were utterly lovestruck as she listened to Hayami ramble. Meanwhile outside, the clouds were beginning to part and the rain was beginning to ease, allowing moonlight and the luminous glow of the city to shine through. Romantically, Ema liked to think that the weather was shifting all for Hayami who finally shone with some sort of cheer for the first time since they ran into each other outside.


	27. Poetry

Contrary to popular belief but Grace wasn’t dumb.

She wasn’t daft. She wasn’t oblivious. She wasn’t dumb.

She remembered every scrape on her knees that her elder sister kissed away the pain for. Stinging and raw, soothed by her lips. She remembered every good mark and every bad mark that she had ever gotten on her tests. She remembered how her heart fluttered in blissful validation when someone, an adult, finally saw her as her own person not just as Grace, Gloria’s dumb little sister.

But all those memories had collapsed in on themselves.

All because of a smile. Because Grace wanted to live on her own two feet, not just take orders and defend an order which was... which was destroying everything around it. So, she scrabbled, with tiger claws and archer’s arrows, towards that hope. No matter how childish. And in doing so, she earned some good graces again.

Because, as it turned out, there were some things about herself that she didn’t know. Not because she was dumb, daft, or oblivious but because she was Grace. In her own head as her own person.

Where Gloria was still looking, Grace was now leaping.

More than anything, Grace wanted to take that plunge back into good graces and other good favours. For what she had helped destroy, she wanted to rebuild. Whilst Gloria was still running the numbers from where she stood, tall, elegant, distant, all of those things and more even to her younger sister who had spent so long clinging to her side, Grace was running headlong towards a different tomorrow. A more fun tomorrow. Bright and smiley.

And more than willing to believe her, Asuka wanted to help because if there was one thing that she was good at it, was being bad at helping people run away from such things.

Trying to earn Asuka’s favour by helping out with these post war efforts, with helping out in the soup kitchens and trying her best with things that she wasn’t good at, admittedly, like construction and being nice without being the cruel sort of nice that she had learned to be underneath both her elder sister’s vision but the Professor’s as well. He handsomely rewarded those with the colour violet if he thought that they could be violent to his neatly planned ends and means.

But with Asuka, and beneath the vision of that Standard Duelist, the one which had been the bane of Gloria’s faction’s existence previously, it was a lot different.

Grace recalled Asuka as being unsmiling. A model student. She asked questions but she didn’t think critically about what she consumed. She wanted knowledge but she didn’t want to bite the hands that fed her that knowledge. With her prowess, she could have been amazing as a soldier were it not for her innate kindness.

But she’s lucky she had it, now.

Grace used to observe her from afar. Thinking about how she could potentially enter these inner circles but never doing so. Better the figurehead Queen of the Blue Dorm than anything more. But the main thing, Grace remembered, aside of Asuka’s student life was that she didn’t smile. And when she did, it was a hollow smile. All thin lips and concealed pretty teeth. Perhaps even forced, unamused because she was above it all but not so above it all that she was of higher importance.

But now, Grace observed, in the catastrophe that they were trying to reverse the damage of, she saw Asuka’s true smile. With laughing eyes and a genuine sincerity to it; plush lips and perfect teeth, too. It wasn’t distraught, in the way that Grace remembered.

So, it was like poetry in motion, Grace thought.

Her hands slowly interlocking with Asuka’s for the first time and feeling as though her hands were made to fit Asuka’s. It was a good feeling in her chest with her heart beating like an archaic, deerskin drum. Beaming unto Asuka who looked down on her fondly with those few centimetres that her height had over Grace’s. Her brown like pale honey eyes elusively thinking things that Grace may never know...

She had strayed from her elder sister’s side, coyly meandering towards Asuka like a kitten. A young woman just like Gloria: tall, elegant distant. The only difference was their mouths. Asuka smiled. She always had but now, it was so much brighter. And Gloria? Gloria didn’t smile. She still didn’t smile, actually and when she did was stern and unamused, just like Asuka from when Academia was still in place as a machination of evil rather than redemption or even plain schooling.

The gap between them slowly closed.

Yes, their mouths were very different, Grace thought. She sighed as Asuka kissed her. She had never been permitted or allowed feelings like this. It was strangely welcome and without substitute. Her elder sister had always kissed away the pain. But Asuka, magnificently, kissed happiness onto her yearning lips. Thinking only of her. Grace as her own person. Not one of two, and the more insignificant of them being, inconsequently, only minutes younger than her twin.

“Thank you...” Grace murmured as her heart swam with joy, knowing exactly how she would one day remember this moment, her first kiss with Asuka, years upon years later.

She knew that she would day reflect that someone saw her as intelligent and perceptive.

Grace kissed Asuka a little harder. Asuka may have initiated the kiss but she was stiff. Uncertain. And Grace was just that tiny bit more intuitive, bolder, biting her lips gently, licking them over and holding her hands like Asuka was the most important thing in the world to her. And simply melting into the gesture, allowing Grace to rob the fragrance of her never before been kissed breath and allowing her to rule this kiss with a pristine majesty that Asuka had never known before.


	28. Compass

It was true what they said, Aki discovered, absence did in fact make the heart grow fonder.

What she hadn’t been told was for whom. She had assumed Yusei but no, it was not him whom her feelings grew strangely stronger for but rather it was for Sherry.

“You should totally come visit over Spring break,” Sherry had told her jokingly, “the weather’s great. I’ll cook you a nice homemade meal, we could visit the Eifel Tower or whatever else you tourists like.”

She had spoken over a video conference call, all in jest and with a vigorous smile but Aki took it to heart. She laughed at Sherry’s joke but her blushing cheeks betrayed her true feelings. She jotted down a few mental notes; a shuffle of her budget there, a chance thrown to the wind here, it would all be fine.

The sound of her luggage’s wheels clicked behind her, out of time with her high heels as she strutted, excitedly, through the airport. From Japan to Germany to France, it was going to be so much fun, Aki was certain. This was what the compass of her own self wanted more than anything else. A fresh start, a head in love, a destiny to make all her own with her own hands. She was headed in the right direction, towards all those good things; there could be no doubt as she held her breath, searching further still for all the things she wanted. Her heart pounded as she scanned the crowds for that dear and familiar face.

Through the crowds, their eyes met, and Aki couldn’t contain the grin. She sped up, faster still, towards her beautiful friend. Before she could even take yet another breath, Sherry swept her up in a tight hug. Aki buried her face in the crook of Sherry’s neck and shoulders, both smelling and tasting her long and fluffy blonde hair. Her arms were so powerful feeling.

The Sherry that Aki had known through long distance calls and video chats was so inferior, unfortunately. This Sherry in the flesh and blood was so, so, so much more perfect than all those pixels and crackly phone calls, Aki very easily decided as she embraced her Sherry back.

“I’ve missed you so much.” Sherry told her, closing her eyes to Aki and just appreciating everything about her.

Their worlds were stopping. The world around them still churned on; people passed, not even giving them so much as a winsome wink as they passed. It mattered not. This was an airport. Stranger things happened in these sorts of places and the exciteable and important hugs of two young ladies were made mundane as a result.

“I’ve missed you more.” Aki told Sherry in a voice wispy with sincerity.

Slowly, almost regretfully, Sherry undid her arms from around Aki. She pulled back, hands lingering on Aki’s forearms and with tears her eyes, she lovingly looked over Aki. Even with her hair askew and sleep in her eyes, she thought Aki was beautiful. She, too, thinking that the Aki of the flesh and blood was far superior to the Aki she saw on computer screens or heard over her phone. Sherry smiled nostalgically.

“I honestly didn’t think you could make it.” Sherry told her in a quiet voice. “I thought I would be waiting and waiting until you texted me to say you were cancelling at the last minute.”

“I would never do that to you.” Aki implored her.

Sherry smiled. “I know, but if you did, I wouldn’t mind. I would understand.”

“Thank you.” Aki said and she pushed forward, another hug ensuing.

“Aw, come on, mon Cherie, you have all of France to explore, I’m the least exciting thing here.” Sherry laughed awkwardly.

“Nonsense,” Aki murmured, still hugging Sherry tightly, “you could make anything exciting; I would know.”

Sherry laughed some more over such a statement, but she shed the awkwardness. Became earnest in accepting Aki’s compliment. Her heart fluttered and Aki could feel such vibrations in the midst of the warmth she exuded. Now it was her turn to regretfully retreat from the hug. Aki smiled brightly onto Sherry, and Sherry was charmed immensely because she hadn’t known Aki to smile quite like that before meaning the independence her studying abroad was giving to her was working both magic and miracles for her.

“You promised me a meal, when I got here, remember?” Aki prompted her. “I would be quite interested in that, madame.”

“With pleasure.” Sherry replied, licking her lips.

Walking together, they continued through the pristine floors of the ground level of the airport. With one hand on the handle of her luggage, Aki’s other hand found a home interlocking with Sherry’s fingers, palm to palm. Warm and palatable. It was wonderful. As they exited together, hurried and excited, Aki became yet more certain still of that little compass in her heart, directing her to all those things she wanted from life. Rewarding results in academia, a successful career, fun vacations, and all these other seemingly little things in between. She wanted them all so long as she could take them by the hand. She couldn’t have been gladder that Sherry was one of them.


	29. Protect

Aqua was a good Ignis, Pandor could sense that.

She knew that Ryoken could as well, hence why, out of all the Ignises, he had chosen Aqua as inspiration. Strange, given that Ryoken had no affection for Sugisaki Miyu, Originator of the Water Ignis, as compared to the affection that he held for the Origins of the Dark and Earth Ignises, debatably the Origin of the Fire Ignis and increasingly the Origin of the Light Ignis as well. But, for whatever reason, Ryoken saw virtue in the honesty that Aqua was beholden to like no other and had wanted to use that as inspiration for Pandor.

Pandor was well aware that she was a box of all the bad things. She was an Ignis in all but name. Metal, where they were more akin to being organic. She was limited so that she could not go mad with the revelations of the infinite or come to view humans as her enemies. She was okay with that. That was how she was programmed.

But one way in which she was permitted to go astray was that she could have relationships, bonds, so long as they were superficial.

But Pandor could still yearn. She could still pine. She could still run all these simulations and more as she tried to touch that which she was not permitted to. She held not grudge against humans nor Ignis, even androids and robots alike to her. She considered herself good natured for a reason, even if that reason was because her master and creator wanted a good little girl, obedient above all else and able to be destroyed and erased at a moment’s notice.

So, all she could do was sit.

Sit down, nice and quiet, as she watched the commotion around her. This was, she thinks, normalcy. Humans playing with other humans; making jokes, having conversations, laughing. She was not permitted to be apart of this because she was a machine but she was happy to see Ryoken having fun. His life seemed so dreary and for a robot like Pandor to have judged that, it mustn’t be good at all.

At least she had the other Ignises, in a way. Some had taken robotic bodies of their own whereas others were content as they were as it was convenient to be compact.

Pandor’s hand settled by her side. There was a space. And then there was Aqua’s hand. She, too, had deemed it more convenient to be small, an Ignis, all in blue, and she sat with Pandor on the table, in Duel Discs, merely watching.

Sometimes, they would exchange a word. Quiet and beneath the din of the conversations around them, in this park, in this sunny day, beside the hot dog truck which most people would never know the true legacy of when it came to the Hero of the Link VRAINS and their enemies who frequented it for a snack.

Aqua was quite funny, Pandor thought. They had the same sense of humour. Muted and honestly, rather unfunny to anyone who didn’t have that same, almost pessimistic niche of humour without being grimdark.

Pandor smiled. She lifted a finger. She had budding feelings towards Aqua. She wasn’t sure why or how, but she did. She appreciated this female Ignis’s company over all other company she had been allowed to partake in but, when Pandor lifted just a finger, everything else came down around her. The Anti Ignis shield. It bubbled and was of blue pixels and no one batted an eye. Another accident, Ryoken would no doubt think if he were to see it out the corner of his eye. He may have trusted the Ignises and their Origins an inch, at this point, but he was by no means willing to give them a mile just yet so the shield that Pandor had would stay intact.

It was meant to protect her, Pandor thought but as she threw an aching, sidelong glance towards Aqua, she thought it was, in truth, meant to protect her. Not Pandor. Aqua.

Why?

Because Pandor was afraid that if she were to fall into too deep of an affection, she would be erased. Rebooted. Her existence was already cruel and unnecessary, but she wanted to have it regardless and continue on without further destruction and repair to her both her physical vessel and what little made up her emotional and mental capacity.

Her feelings towards Aqua were already tenuous at best, stray sparks of electricity inside of her which Pandor chose to identify as affection for they only ever happened around Aqua. Aqua who was kind and truthful, noble traits that Pandor was made in the image of and therefore aspired towards, but also because she was sweet and mature. For these reasons, Pandor chose to pine for her, as seemingly stilted and strange as it were as love, the chemical, was organic and Pandor was anything but. Yet, she would not change how she chose to decide herself and how she saw Aqua.

Even if her feelings were decisions, they were still such fragile things bequest to the whims of heartbreak. Decisions which were as fragile as ice or tears, were still able to be lost. It was better to love than to not love at all? Even if these affections were unsaid and kept solely in the folkloric box of all things bad and horrific that Pandor was made in the allusion of.


	30. Chapter 30

Yuzu shifted from one foot to the other whilst admiring herself at the mirror before her reflection starkly changed. From magenta pigtails which Yuzu didn’t quite think was symmetrical yet to long dark hair all the way down.

“Hey, Ruri, get out of the mirror.” Yuzu pouted.

Ruri giggled. “Sorry Yuzu, I just wanted to stop by, and you look so lovely with the side ponytail, maybe you should try it today.”

“Oh, seconded.” Serena piped up and joined Ruri in the mirror, clambering all over her to Ruri’s eternal suffering and cringing. “One ponytail is so much more manageable than two.” She nodded sagely.

“Or, if you want to go the whole nine yards of practicality, chopping it all off is clearly the best option.” Rin added, just as wise as Serena in her own way.

“No, we all look so much better at least shoulder length.” Ruri trembled, vainly afraid.

Yuzu laughed. Sometimes, this routine got boring and irritating. She was her own person, nice and physical, but sometimes the other girls were just as equally individual, but it was nice. To be loved as she was and there were none who knew her quite so intimately as them, so she smiled fondly when her breath petered out.

“Thanks for the advice, girls.” Yuzu said as she tried to find her own reflection amongst the three of them but to little avail. She continued to fidget with her hair.

Ruri pouted. “Oh, I would give anything right now to just. Pop over there and fix your hair for you, Yuzu.”

“Not right now, Ruri.” Yuzu told her as she adjusted her barrets.

“Not like that.” Ruri said. “I mean, in person.”

“I’m sorry, Ruri.” Yuzu said.

“We get you though.” Rin said.

“We miss it too.” Serena added.

“I know.” Ruri said and she playfully took Serena and Rin’s hands, drifting to and fro slightly.

Watching them made Yuzu wistful for the opposite. They could touch each other, so long as they could coexist peacefully, be it in her head or soul or even on the cold reflection of glass and steel, like in mirrors and even windows. But she couldn’t touch them. Not really.

Rin perked up, “Oh, Yuzu, you managed to get your hair right.” Her compliment came off more of a blunt observation than anything else.

“She’s right.” Ruri agreed. “All nice and symmetrical, it looks so good on you, Yuzu.”

“Even if its not to your prissy tastes.” Serena teased Ruri, reaching over to her and poking her left cheek.

“Stop that.” Ruri murmured.

“But its true.” Rin added. “You are a priss, all things considered.”

“Stop teasing her.” Yuzu told them.

“Can’t help it.” Rin and Serena both mumbled.

“I think you’re perfect just the way you are, Ruri.” Yuzu said.

“Aw, thank you, Yuzu.” Ruri smiled a smile which was like moonlight.

Yuzu’s heart pounded. She glanced towards the door then back to the mirror, meeting Rin and Serena’s eyes as well. She really ought to be going but she had the time. It was important to cherish these little moments of what was their normalcy and what was their domesticity, even if it was before boring things like school. With a smile, Yuzu bounced forward over the counter, hands clambering along the cold porcelain vanity and then one struck up to the mirror.

Pressing her fingers along it, for a moment, she dared to believe that they would interlock with any one of the other girls but alas. It was just a few seconds of flight of fantasy, but Yuzu adored it all the same. The feeling of her hand on the mirror and what it meant to her, to all of them.

“I love you guys.” she quietly whispered to them.

Their hands jostled one another, interlocking to share just one space which Yuzu inhabited on the other side of the mirror. They too hoped, for just a second, that something strange, stranger than they already were, would happen and all four of their hands, real and osft and physical, would interlock but instead, the mirror remained. Sturdy but strangely warm. There was a minute miracle in that too.

“We love you as well.” Ruri said on behalf of all three of them.

Yuzu smiled. “I’ll be seeing you.”

“Yeah, soon we hope.” Serena said.

“Yeah.” Yuzu agreed, murmuring.

She was certain that her loves would be glimpsed in the corner of her eyes, in windowpanes and in still shopping scenes, glimmering over mannequins and maybe in iridescent puddles on the ground. They would be seen, even when they were not face to face or side by side, Yuzu was certain as she, almost ruefully, drew her hand back and continued to get ready for her day.


End file.
